As a football fan, you take the wins, no matter how small they might be. If your team is Bristol Rovers, like mine used to be, at least in terms of going to games, yet another shambolic season of failure at an embarrassingly ramshackle stadium would have been devastating enough, but to see former rivals and still city neighbours, Bristol City, threatening to reach the Premier League would have seen some reaching for the strychnine. Happy days, then, as City imploded in the first leg of the play off semi-final, losing 3-0 to Sheffield United at a sold out Ashton Gate. Much as I feel that schadenfreude is among the most pernicious and negative of emotions, you’d need a heart of stone not to have a snigger when they news came through. Small pleasures and all that.
Inevitably of course, many City fans blamed the referee for their demise. A controversial penalty award and subsequent sending off ruined City’s evening, I read. Clearly the ref was on the Blades’ payroll. I may have thought the same until I actually saw the replay which very clearly showed the penalty award was correct and given that the City defender prevented what is known technically ‘a clear goalscoring opportunity’, no one can objectively complain that both decisions were entirely correct. But that’s the thing about football. As a fan, you watch the game through the prism of your natural bias. The referee is always against your team. I know. I saw him every fortnight back in days of yore.
I happened to be travelling into town on Thursday evening and the bus I was on was rammed with City fans. You might think this is not noteworthy, but in one way it is. The bus travels through what used to be regarded as ‘Rovers areas’, places barely a couple of miles from the Memorial Stadium. An alarming number of the fans – and it should be alarming for Gasheads – were young, ranging from very young and accompanied by parents and groups of teenage lads, decked out in red and white. While City are not destined to join the elite clubs in the Premier League anytime soon, their operation as a top half Championship club, played out in an increasingly impressive state-of-the-art stadium, is light years of Rovers’ piss poor Memorial Stadium at which fourth tier football will once again be played out next season.
Historically, City have usually, though not always, been top dogs in our fair city. Now, they are so far ahead of the Gas that they have disappeared from the rear view mirror. While City are bankrolled by a local billionaire, Rovers are propped up financially by Hussain AlSaeed, a Kuwaiti businessman, who after promising to take the club to the promised land astutely steered it into League Two.
You have to wonder if their futures will look broadly the same as they do now. Without an obscenely mega rich owner, perhaps a Petrochemical billionaire from the middle east, City lack the resources to reach and then stay in the Premier League. By the same token, AlSaeed’s Rovers are unlikely to ever to achieve settled Championship status without a massive increase in resources, or more financially doping some might say.
I am a believer in the theory of clubs having a natural level. City, a mid table Championship club, Rovers, a mid to upper League One club. That’s generally what things have been like since I started following Rovers some 53 years ago. History shows that some clubs are able to alter their status, not always in a good way, but certainly in Bristol that theory holds true. For many people I know, the natural levels for City and Rovers seem to suit a large percentage of Bristol fans.
I know loads of Gasheads who have absolutely no interest in ever reaching the Premier League, or even the Championship. They are, at least when the club isn’t yo-yoing between the lower divisions, happy where they are. They like to stand on the terraces rather than sit, they are happy with a pre match pasty rather than expensive corporate nosebag, they quite like being the underdog, the clichéd ‘Ragbag Rovers’. They know the football isn’t going to be great but somehow that doesn’t really matter. It’s about meeting mates, having a pint and a good time and as long as the team wins more than it loses, the football itself is less important than you might think.
Bristol’s two professional clubs, therefore, could not be more different. They are no longer rivals in terms of football and in a way that suits a lot of people. Obviously, there are still significant levels of schadenfreude among fans of both clubs. Some City fans celebrated Rovers’ relegation this year and last night not a few Rovers fans enjoyed City’s play-off self-immolation last night. Done the right way, it can be quite funny and I’d like to think banter and piss-taking will always be there, whether the Bristol clubs are rivals or not. But when glorying in the defeat and failures of others is all you have, all may not be well.
City almost certainly overachieved by even reaching the play-offs in the first place and Rovers underachieved by navigating their way effortlessly (literally) into the bottom tier. I suspect that in due course, Rovers will return to League One and hopefully stay there this time and City will do what they usually do, briefly threaten to join the top flight but then like West Ham they will fade and die.
Until then, City can celebrate the achievement of making the play offs, as well as Rovers being relegated and Rovers can console themselves with the fact that the gap between both clubs is only two divisions, possibly just for one year. Some might say that it’s disappointing that they only thing you have to celebrate is someone else’s failure, but that’s football and football fans for you. I know because I was one once and last night, albeit briefly, I felt like one again. Bad luck City. You made me smile again last night. Hopefully, Gasheads will be able to celebrate their own success this time next year, instead of someone else’s failure? You never know.
