It’s over

by Rick Johansen

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, I’m not going to see my old, and only, team Bristol Rovers defeat Charlton Athletic tonight and set up an exciting second half of the season run at the play offs. The worst managerial appointment in the history of the club, that of the disgraced and disgraceful Joey Barton is now a thing of the past and in his position is the thoroughly decent Matt Taylor. I am happy about that. Similarly, I am happy that the former owner and obsessive self-publicist Wael al Qadi is now just a minor shareholder, although I can’t say I’m over impressed with the ownership model that hands a majority shareholding to Kuwaiti businessman Hussain AlSaeed. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and in terms of owners, fans these days have to accept what and who they’re given. I’m less unhappy with the club than I was and I am, genuinely, happy for the fans. Having not been to a single Rovers game in five and a half years, nothing has happened to persuade me to go back.

I’ve been performing mental gymnastics over the Rovers since the 2006 boardroom bust-up where, inevitably I chose the losing side. It affected me far more than it should have done and it all but severed the emotional contact I had with the club. Some years later, I found myself back on the terraces, returning to write for the matchday programme which remains the highlight of my writing life. But it wasn’t the same. I was back among friends – not all my friends: some had quietly slipped away to do other things – and that’s massive with the football, but the passion had diminished to the point where I hardly cared whether the team won or lost. That’s not a good feeling to have and in 2018, I decided to call it a day in terms of going to watch the Rovers. I haven’t been back since.

In early 2021, Barton was appointed manager of Bristol Rovers. For reasons I am loathe to publish, given how libel and defamation laws work in this country, I could never watch a single game with Barton involved. Any thoughts I had of returning for the odd game promptly faded away. When, two and a half years later, Barton was sacked I briefly wondered whether this might be the time to return to BS7 and be with my friends. After all, football is only a game, right, and your friends are far more important than a piddling little football club. Well, yes and yes, but it did not take long for me to realise that nothing had really changed.

I had found a life away from football that I liked. Sure, I missed the matchday banter and meeting with friends and acquaintances, but there was something else that wasn’t quite right. While I was the one to have walked away, very few of my friends and acquaintances had bothered to keep in touch. I might get a sporadic message but it was obvious that they, too, had moved on. Like Bristol Rovers was no longer an integral part of my being, I was no longer an integral part of the people I knew. I still see a small handful of Gashead friends on an occasional, becoming rare, basis; others I see not at all.  When people said, “We’d like to see you,” and, I feel, meant it, I always felt there was a subliminal “but don’t worry. Life carries on without you, as it has done for the last five years plus.” I believed, and still believe, that the next move was and is up to me and here it is. It’s over.

Several decades ago, an old acquaintance said to me that he was taking a break from watching Bristol Rovers because his therapist told him that it was making his mental health worse. I smiled at that one, until he said, “I’m not joking.” The football club’s fortunes were affecting his depression and there was only one thing to do: stop going. I haven’t seen nor heard of him for more than a decade now but I hope he is well and enjoying his football again, assuming that’s what he wants to do.

My loyal reader has had to put up with countless whingeing, self-pitying blogs about my own mental health and I don’t intend to go into it too deeply here, except to say that my severe clinical depression, now with added ADHD, never goes away. It comes but it never goes and with it comes an unhealthy seasoning of anxiety. Do I really want to come across the ghosts of the past, various senior officials of the club, basically wrong ‘uns or halfwits – some were both – with whom I fell out, people who banned a close friend from attending matches, others who axed good people who worked hard, often for no reward, at the football club? Because I know I’d say something, not necessarily something I’d regret, but something that would make me at least moderately angry and, yes, make my mental health worse.

In 2023, I mentioned to some folk, I’d come back to selected games. It might not be exactly like old times – how could it be since many of the people I used to go with have either long walked away or even, tragically died? – but maybe things might get better. And as the days and weeks passed, I began to fret about it, despite, it must be said, zero encouragement from anyone to go. I could kick things down the road – maybe next season, eh? – but that might involve lying and I don’t want to lie. So rather than defer any decision, I’ve decided to call it a day. I know I won’t see my friends quite as much as I do now (and in many cases not as much as I do now actually means not at all) but there’s no other way.

Am I happy with this? Happy isn’t really the word. It’s not unhappy, either. It’s just something that I had to do, something incredibly minor and insignificant that I’ve somehow given top billing in my mind. As my old friends and acquaintances meet for their pre match pints, I am not so stupid and indeed egotistic that I will form any part of the conversation and quite right too. I am not the future at Bristol Rovers, I am the past. They always say that club owners, managers and players come and go but the fans are alway there. That definitely used to be true of me but it’s not anymore.

Never say never again? I can’t even get my head around that. I can’t predict the future any better than I can manage the present, but this feels like the end to me. I’ll keep looking out for scores, hearing all the gossip (though not through forums: fuck that) and remembering what it used to be like, but it’s not like that anymore.

I’ll always be a Gashead. There will never be a new team for me to latch on to. I like Liverpool, I watch Bristol Manor Farm from time to time and Feyenoord, the first team I ever saw play live will always be in my heart and oddly when I was in Rotterdam in the autumn and went to De Kuip I actually felt passion for the club and the team, reminding what I had missed for so long, but no one will come close to how I felt about, and lived and breathed, Bristol Rovers.

Long live the Gas, Goodnight Irene. I’ll see you in my dreams (but not anywhere else).

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