I have to say that yesterday represented the greatest Bristol Rovers celebration I didn’t go to. I thought the scenes – the popular word for any kind of celebration these days – far exceeded 2nd May 1990, the greatest Gas celebration I was fortunate enough to be a part of. Gloucester Road, the gateway from the north of Bristol to the centre, apart from the M32 that is, was closed as Gasheads held an improvised street party, closing the road for over two hours. Scenes? In the words of the legendary broadcaster Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, not arf!
My reasons for staying away are so personal and complex that even I can’t quite explain them and not even my close family nor my closest friends can understand why. I am not sure I can either. But here’s another go. I’ll try and keep it brief, although I know I will be in broken record territory for long periods.
I have supported Bristol Rovers for around 44 years. I juggled attending games for many years with ‘playing’ (a generous description of my lack of ability) parks football, but Rovers were always my team. I turned up, watched the team, went to the pub, met friends and general did what football fans are supposed to do, which is to watch football. In the early 2000s, I was persuaded to get involved in what some called the ‘politics’ at the club. Understanding that the club was being run in a shambolic way, losing money had over fist, tumbling into League Two and being run on the basis of boom and bust. Things could be different and better. But those who wanted change failed to persuade and it got messy.
My loyal reader may have noticed that I like to write a lot. I am not pretending what I write is all good, but some people seem to like it. Having had little or no talent at anything else (believe me, this is not false modesty) I channelled all my efforts into writing. As a child, writing was the only subject I truly loved and turned out to be the only aspect of school life I was, I think, good at.
I then got the gig of writing for the Bristol Rovers programme, a huge honour and later, finally, I was asked to write for the Bristol Evening Post as their token fan. I was never going to be the new Henry Winter, or even Chris Swift, but it was an achievement of which I was proud. Then, when the boardroom split in two and I chose the wrong side, I was removed from the programme and, thanks to the intervention of a senior official at Bristol Rovers, was also sacked from the Bristol Evening Post. Later, I was taken to one side by an official from Bristol Rovers and told, on a confidential basis, who it was that arranged to have me removed from the paper and how he did it. Given that the instruction came from a very senior official, who happily is no longer involved at the club, I knew my number was up. 10 years on and it still grates with me, still gnaws at my soul, still makes me wonder if this one action ended a lifetime ambition. And it left me pondering about those two awful words: what if? What if my Post column had alerted other publishers? What if I had found a job doing what I had always wanted to do?
This all went on as I was battling with long periods of severe clinical depression, as well as various anxieties. Those of you who know about mental illness will understand its debilitating nature and how it mangles your entire thought process. And Bristol Rovers began to make my clinical depression worse. That is a simple fact.
And so it has gone on, a situation that was only compounded when a close friend was banned from even attending matches at the ground by an autocratic and spiteful club owner, which led me to conduct a very personal three year boycott of all Rovers games. I will be honest here, although I may be wrong, and say that I felt very alone during those years. I missed out on a number of things, like a date with promotion at Wembley, various celebrations with old friends; all, I know, wholly self-inflicted. There were times when I thought no one cared about an injustice and that it might last until I breathed my last breath. People would say: “Why bother? It won’t change anything.” But that wasn’t the point. I saw what I perceived to be injustice and I did not stand up to injustice on behalf of a friend, what kind of man was I?
Fast forward to yesterday and now the team has been promoted under a young, dynamic manager, led by a Jordanian billionaire who seems to have as much passion for the club as any lifelong supporter. And I wasn’t there.
“Move on, get over it”, say well meaning friends. That, to malfunctioning brain, is a little like saying to a clinical depressive, “Pull yourself together, cheer up”, as if it was just a matter of smiling. It is more that I have come to associate Bristol Rovers with a bad time of my life and poor mental health is not some kind of here today, gone tomorrow illness that disappears like a cold. I expect this makes as much sense to you, dear reader, as it does to my family and friends, that is to say none.
Lucky you if your brain functions in a “normal” way, whatever that is. Lucky you if you can compartmentalise all your thoughts and feelings, and leave the bad ones in a box at the turnstiles. I can’t do that, which is why I wasn’t at the Memorial Stadium yesterday. In a way, it was a kind of self-harm because I knew what I would be missing, but after all that had gone before, I had to stay away.
Am I envious of those who enjoyed the day of their lives? Envy, jealousy doesn’t come into it. I am genuinely happy for friends I have known for nearly a lifetime.
The anger and bitterness has all left my soul, just the feelings of loss, of emptiness and, yes, the feelings of what could have been remain. I don’t even hate the previous owners and officials of the club, feeling only pity for those whose modus operandi is obfuscation and, on occasions, downright dishonesty. Those people have gone but they took me down with them. When I was in a bad place they made it worse.
A bright new day has really arrived at the Rovers now, with supporters now sharing dreams that were once the province of other clubs and ever theirs. This is just the start of the rising and for most people it is the chance to dream and in football, the dream is everything. Just ask Leicester City.
