4000 holes in Blackburn, maybe, but 1200 Gasheads in Aldershot!

According to the Beatles, the news was that there were 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

That was quite impressive, but today Bristol Rovers took 1200 supporters to Aldershot! That’s more than impressive!

Many Conference clubs get gates around that number for their home games and not a few League Two clubs do too. Gasheads should be proud of their efforts because if there is anything wrong with Bristol Rovers – and I think there’s a lot wrong with Bristol Rovers, but the arguments are now over regarding that – it certainly isn’t the supporters.

Yes, I do realise that Rovers should get big crowds and away followings. The size of Bristol and its surrounding areas run into the millions, unlike say Yeovil, whose team is struggling in League One in a market town with a population similar to the level of support Rovers took to Wembley for the League Two play off final in 2007. But there is a certain resilience about Rovers fans. Years upon decades of hopeless under-achievement, culminating last spring into relegation into non league football for the first time in their history, has only seemed to galvanise support! Short of celebrating how shit they have been, Gasheads do not seem to know the meaning of the world failure. There can be no such thing when the promised land is only a few games away. What a shame that the promised land is only league football!

As I was cycling to work this morning, I passed a group of middle aged men and women (this was a conservative estimate: I think they were actually in later middle age, at least!) wearing their replica blue and white quartered shirts with their names on the back! Putting aside the wearing of replica shirts by anyone over 30 (or even 20) – I think it is almost always a colossal fashion error, to put it mildly – I could only admire their loyalty and commitment. I have always hated away travel at the best of times (and there were few of them when I travelled away) so to see a group who must be near collecting their bus passes loading up the car with flasks, woolly hats and large blankets (no, I couldn’t work that one out either) was quite impressive.

And it will carry on like this, especially if the team is doing well.

I am told that supporters are well happy now the team includes a large number of players who are playing for the shirt and if that is true, then fair play. Personally, I believe that supporters play not so much for any given shirt – they are professional players after all – but for reasons of pride, hunger and ambition and if they play in a like-minded squad they have a far better chance of succeeding. Players, like supporters, are fans too and the ones who don’t come from the town in which they play usually have teams of their own to support and their desire comes from wanting to succeed, to better themselves. The shirt may be symbolic but it matters far more to the supporters. And so it should.

There is no doubting that Bristol Rovers is a big under performing club that has not fallen out of the league by accident. It is also true that the current relative success is not an accident either but, for once, the result of a good managerial appointment by a board who have fucked up on a consistent basis through most of the last decade.

The trick will be to build on the amazing away (and home) support and to reach the levels of the Championship because our gates should be competing with League One clubs anyway.

We are around the time of the season where the league table does not lie so it looks as if, given a little luck and some good decisions by the manager and board between now and next April, Rovers could be in and around the play offs.

Anything less than the play offs should be regarded as abject failure anyway. League Two is still failure in my eyes regardless of what happens from hereon in.