Lions led by donkeys

by Rick Johansen

5800 at the Memorial Stadium today. Absolutely ridiculous. To see Bristol Rovers draw with Kidderminster Harriers. Loyalty or what?

I know I have said it before but chairman Nick Higgs’ regularly repeated ‘without the board there would be no club” sounds ever more absurd with each passing match. Presumably, he really believes it to be true and if not a single Gashead turned up to watch the club he has steered into the Conference with breathtaking incompetence, he would be wandering round an empty stadium, trying to persuade the Blackthorn End bars that it was all about him and the minority shareholders.

Each and every one of them deserves a medal, or at the very least a free pint or pasty. I’ll wager that all of them have been there, through thin and thinner, supporting the shirt, as supporters do and not giving a toss about who runs the club but wishing they’d do a better job of it. The current lot could scarcely do worse, could they?

I wonder what Denis Dunford would have made of it all? A true giant in the history of Bristol Rovers, who quite literally saved the club and led it into what we now call The Championship whilst we were playing at a dilapidated non league ground in another city. Nick Higgs, boosted by millions earned by Lennie Lawrence (“a disaster for Bristol Rovers”) through trips to Wembley and the Millennium Stadium and an epic FA Cup run, squandered the inheritance and how. And do you know what? I include Geoff Dunford in my past praise. Whilst I have not always agreed with Geoff on things that have happened at the club, the fact is that without the Dunfords, including Geoff, there REALLY wouldn’t be a Bristol Rovers. I fear that Mr Higgs plays the “without the board” card as a badge of honour whereas the Dunford side of the debate is a matter of fact.

Mr Higgs could learn a thing or two from Denis Dunford, mind you. Every time, I wrote to him about something, either he would reply personally or someone from the club would on his behalf. When people write to Mr Higgs they often waste their time. I have made numerous visits to Denis Dunford’s old golf club in recent times and the memories of him are of nothing but admiration and love. That dignified man who played all through the year wearing his polo shirt whilst everyone else was bedecked in winter gear and their thermals. I am sure Mr Higgs has plenty of friends too, but perhaps we just exist in different circles. Everyone loved Denis.

Geoff Dunford left the board earlier this year. Whether you like Geoff or not, the fact is that his family has done an awful lot for the club. Despite everything, I cannot bring myself to dislike him. He is funny, he can be charming, perhaps he represents a different era but my god the club was never in as big a mess it is now with his family in charge. And why is he not a Vice President of the club? Every other chairman became Vice President. Do you think Mr Higgs simply forgot about it, just like he ‘forgot’ to reply to my correspondence and that of many others? Yes, that’s it: he’s got a bad memory, except that everyone who knows him says he has an elephant’s memory.

Without the fans, the crowd would have been 500 at Alfreton the other night and maybe a couple of hundred today? They may not have the money and the nosebag from the executive boxes but they are a damn sight more important to the football club than half a dozen bungling businessmen who have ‘led’ the club to the lowest point in its history.

I haven’t seen the reports, read the forums, spoken to anyone about today’s game. I know the Rovers drew, that they are not losing more than they are losing, things are not as bad as they were. Just.

The supporters could easily have taken flight from the failing club but they didn’t. Most of them probably feel they are stakeholders, if only through emotion and history which are both sufficient in themselves. I was like that too. It was my club, as it was theirs. They might have owned the club in terms of bricks and mortar, but when a goal went in, when the team got promoted, when the team got relegated, it was my team as well as theirs.

So many other things to do than watch a lowly non league club on a grim, overcast Saturday afternoon, but still over 5000 turned up today to support a team that would not even be there without the board. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be there without the loyal 5000, but let’s not let an argument get in the way of a combination of self-praise and self-pity. Lions led by donkeys.

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1 comment

Jools Pirog November 17, 2014 - 02:45

Be careful not to be seen as bitter Rick. I agree with what you say although my limitrd experience of Geoff Dunford has never led to to see him as charming. If anything I found him defensive & small, not just in stature but in the way he thinks, acts and responds to those who would dare to question him let alone disagree. He threatened me with litigation over a tweet but then, when I challenged him to carry it through, nothing. He then saw the photos my fiancĂ©e took, of the now infamous “smirk gate ” after match photos, when the club were relegated out of the football league. He accused her of having an agenda to get him when the photos were if the entire day, he decided it was all about him. Ain’t that just typical of the sickness that is in & around the club ?
Instead of trying to be magnanimous and showing some humility in an awful time, he strikes out at a photographer just going about her business. Sophie right asked for an apology and for him to alter or delete his tweet, that says she had taken the photo with agenda to blacken his name, we are still waiting.
Could we have sued ? Damned right we could but there is the difference. Sophie is a bigger & better person.
There is so much wrong at the club and it has had an incremental effect, seeing entire families stop going to games and who will support the club in future ? These families are not now passing on the love of the club to their children and what we have is just what we have. There are no new generation of Rovers fans in the pipeline, as there was with you and me when our Fathers took us to our first game.
The club is dying in front of our eyes but the figures at match days are hiding that fact.
I fear that unless there is major change, quickly, then it is all over bar the shouting. We are witnessing the dying throes of this once great little club, a club we all loved and cherished and as part of a big family. If the club are not promoted back into the football league this season then the novelty of non league will be gone, Along with the parachute payments from the football league.
This reminds me of the joke about a patient being told he was already dead but just had not laid down.
RIP Bristol Rovers. I loved you once.

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