An evening with some ungrumpy old Gasheads

I had an excellent evening yesterday in the Wetherspoons pub by Bristol Temple Meads station, in the company of Bristol Rovers supporters past and present. (I am, unquestionably and it seems irreversibly, in the former camp.) It was still interesting and instructive to spend a small part of the evening discussing the state of the club.

I am not exactly in the best place to be discussing matters on or off the pitch at the Rovers since I have not seen a game for two and a half years and I would not recognise a single member of the squad if I bumped into them.

There was plenty of realism about the club from those present. Everyone expects Rovers to finish at least second in the Conference this year (if I was a betting man, I would stake the house on them winning the (non) league, but then with my record in the predictions world, I’d have been homeless long ago). Everyone agrees that the chairman Nick Higgs has certainly bet the house (well, the club anyway since he is now borrowing from venture capitalists rather than putting in his own money) on the High Court case about whether Sainsburys are stuck with a contract to build a supermarket they no longer intend to build. The club’s assertion that they would be ‘back to square one’ if they lost the case is accurate enough if square one means being more in debt than ever before, with £2 million worth of loans to be repaid at over 14% per annum and no plan to build a new ground. And there were certainly no comments like ‘Dartford is a tough place to go’, which it palpably isn’t in the grand scheme of things, although some people would probably say the Downs League would be a tough place to go in the unlikely event of Rovers being drawn against one of their lower league clubs in the cup. Actually, let’s not jest: if the UWE dream lies in tatters come June, who knows where the club will be playing, unless Mr Higgs has been able to attract some interest from the Middle East.

One of the most interesting comments came from one of our group who had been to most games this season in reply to a comment that it was mainly the young Gasheads who had most embraced life in the Conference. He pointed out that there were very few young fans going to games these days, which backed up something the former Rovers director David Brain told me some years ago. The average age according to Mr Brain was nearer 50 than 40. And being in the Conference is not exactly something that is easy to sell to the kids of the Premier League generation. Not many groups of schoolchildren will be desperate to get to the Memorial Stadium to watch Rovers play Alfreton (‘always a tough game’).

Undoubtedly, Rovers strong run this season is boosting attendances, even if the opposition is often part time. People love to see their team win and a team that has only lost four games all season must have a chance of promotion. From Rovers point of view, they MUST go up this season because the further loss of income that a second season in the Conference would bring about would be very bad news. If the directors don’t want to put any more of their own money into the club, do they just keeping borrowing more and more from people whose business is to make a lot of money very quickly by lending money?

Whether they go up or not, they’ll go up or not without me. Although it’s still something that matters to many of my friends, some of whom I saw last night, I’m happy to watch from the sidelines. If Nick Higgs is unable to tell the truth about a certain banning order, then why should I believe him when he says anything at all?

The emotional attachment has gone but happily so has the anger and bitterness. I’m still interested in Bristol Rovers from a distance but it’s not my problem anymore. Nick Higgs has seen to that and in some ways I am almost grateful for his near incoherent and often misleading statements. It’s his club and he can do what he likes with it so I’ll just do something else until he buggers off. And if he doesn’t bugger off, so be it.