I never thought it could happen

by Rick Johansen

The new owners at Bristol Rovers continue to say, and more importantly do, the right things at the Memorial Stadium. The smooth appointment of a new board and performance director, the quashing of a vindictive banning order on a former director, a dramatic improvement in communication from the club and now the announcement that season ticket prices are being frozen next season. I was highly critical of the old regime at Bristol Rovers, I believe with some justification, but what is happening now at the club is little different from what I always wanted. I wanted it to be better.

The new chairman Steve Hamer describes the decision to freeze season ticket prices as ‘a gesture of goodwill’, but I see it as much more than a gesture. I see it more in terms of a reward to the supporters of their loyal support through thin and thinner and an acknowledgement that without the supporters the club would be nothing. Mr Hamer’s predecessor Nick Higgs always insisted that ‘without the board of directors there would be no Bristol Rovers’ but as the Al-Qadi family has proven beyond reasonable doubt, there are always new sets of owners and directors just around the corner. To be fair to Mr Higgs, I believe he may have meant his comment not necessarily in the way it came out – communication is not his forte – and what he really meant to say was the club was effectively insolvent but for the loans put in by directors. If that is indeed what he meant, I think he’s still wrong because the only reason the club was in a financial mess is because of the way the previous board ran it.

At my comeback game last Tuesday, my earlier comments about how I would much prefer to see football clubs owned and represented by supporters were gently tossed back in my direction, the general point being, “One minute you are opposing all these dreadful foreigners buying up English football clubs, then the best minute you are desperate to blow smoke up their nether regions!” My reply to this is simple: guilty as charged! And this is why.

Various ownership models have been put to supporters for the best part of 15 years and the simple fact is that they have all been rejected by most Gasheads. That is a simple fact. I do not honestly feel there is the stomach, nor interest, for serious fan involvement in Bristol Rovers. What has worked at Wimbledon, Wycombe and Portsmouth is not for us and there is no point in further labouring the issue. And as we have said, the ownership model whereby a group of local millionaires run the club in such a way that if they ran their own businesses in the same way they wouldn’t be millionaires for long has taken Rovers into the Conference. What was left? More of the same and if so for how long? The Al-Qadi involvement was surely the final throw of the dice?

I have to believe that the club’s new owners are for real. It is too early to judge the future direction of the club, but at least we know there will be a direction. It seems to me that already the new regime is fixing the foundations of the club by informing and respecting the supporters. They recognise that a manager with no scouting network at all is not going to be as effective with a manager who has an effective scouting network. They understand that we cannot develop young players whilst the academy is regarded as an afterthought, something the club has to do and not what it wants to do. And above all they understand that the UWE stadium, or a new stadium elsewhere, is the cornerstone, the very building block of any potential success. I am far convinced that the old regime had a Plan A, never mind a Plan B. With the calibre of people on board now at the Mem, my doubts have largely disappeared.

This has taken all of two weeks so it’s not a bad start. The new owners have taken over at a time when the season is coming to a head, with the squad established under Darrell Clarke and with the transfer window closed down. The new owners will want only one thing between now and May and that will be the smooth continuation of the season. The changes off the field can carry on but the playing side cries out for stability. Nothing that has happened to date suggests that the new owners don’t understand this.

So far, it’s 10 out of 10 to the new boss and his team. Professional, transparent and, from what we can tell, straight-talking. Who ever thought that could happen at Bristol Rovers?

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