In an ideal world, which of course this isn’t, I would be at the Memorial Stadium today to enjoy what I now suspect will be a promotion celebration, but I won’t be. I see Bristol Rovers comfortably beating the part-timers of Alfreton and more importantly, I see current Conference leaders Barnet slipping up in their home game against Gateshead for whom it will almost certainly be Gary Mills’ last game as manager. A number of clubs are keen on signing up Mills and he will want to end his career in the north east with a flourish.
I won’t be there for the same reason I haven’t been to a Rovers game for coming up to three years, the banning of a close friend. I don’t see that banning order being rescinded at any time soon (or ever) and I have come to the conclusion, now that the anger and, I admit, some bitterness has wholly subsided, that the home game against Torquay United on 20 October 2012 will have been the last time I ever saw the club I have supported since I was a spotty schoolboy. With the club attracting increased crowds in non league football, I doubt that Nick Higgs and the board of directors are missing me very much! And why should they?
And there is another matter that has improved and indeed changed my perspective. We have all read and heard about the recent passing of our friend Ben Hiscox. My village in Stoke Gifford remains a place of great sadness all these weeks on, but I have to say that my old club, the Rovers, has been first class in supporting the family and the community. Granting a minute’s applause before the Good Friday game was far more than a gesture by the football club: it was a statement of unity with Gasheads at a time of grief and great sadness. I have been in correspondence with chairman Nick Higgs to thank the club for their efforts and to be fair to a man I have not always seen eye-to-eye with (to say the least), his responses reflect the depths to which Rovers felt and understood our loss. He could not have done anymore. Thank you, Mr Higgs.
I need to explain that this is not a whinge and a whine about the club. I now accept what has happened at the club, that the owners do have in law the right to ban who they like and whilst I don’t agree with it, we are now at the end of the road and we all have to move on. There are, as we have been reminded, more important things in life.
It will be a considerable achievement to exit the Conference at the correct end after just one season and manager Darrell Clarke, who was dropped right in it at the end of last season by John Ward’s incredible decision to move upstairs leaving things in the hands of a rookie, will rightly deserve all the praise that will be coming to him. And whilst the supporters have swamped small clubs up and down the land, the novelty of being the biggest fish in a very small pond would certainly wear off after a season or so in the barren world of non league football. In short, it is vital that Rovers get back to the Football League before they get used to this level.
At least I’ll be there in some sort of spirit, along with many of my friends who still go and, sadly, those who don’t, ignoring those post match requests not to invade the pitch! After so many years of crap, would they really expect fans to stay meekly on the terraces? I don’t think so.
