Here today

You wait for years for a blog about Bristol Rovers to come along and then three come along at exactly the same time. Who needs buses, anyway? This one is about Ken Masters, the former Bristol Rovers director, who last week resigned from his role in a blaze of self-congratulation and self-pity. Enough has been said about Masters’ achievements as a director elected by supporters who paid £1.3 million to put him there because his achievements are zero. However, his departure asks some interesting questions, which some of us, though probably not many of us, would like answering.

Long-serving Bristol Rovers Supporters Club (BRSC) chair Jim Chappell said this about Masters following his resignation: “As Chairman I did not even know of Ken’s existence before he was elected as a Supporters Club-nominated Director on the Board some fourteen years ago.” That was telling in itself. Masters appeared to come from nowhere to suddenly stand for election to a position enabled by a scheme that enabled BRSC to buy shares in the football club in exchange for directorships. Was he even a member of BRSC at the time? He certainly wasn’t a contributor to the share scheme. But I’d like to take Chappell’s analogy a step further. Was anyone else at Bristol Rovers aware of Masters’ existence before he was elected as a BRSC nominated director?

Does anyone remember him from the Eastville days? Or Twerton Park, perhaps? Or from 1996 when we returned to Bristol at the Memorial Ground, or stadium as it later became?

It is entirely possible that Masters was a well known figure before his elevation to the prawn sandwich brigade in the executive boxes and given his relentless self-promotion and his self-proclaimed deep love for the club, which he states goes right to his bone marrow, it is hard to believe him standing or sitting quietly, keeping himself to himself.

So, who knew Ken Masters before 2003? Not those who travelled to away matches, it seems; none of whom I have spoken to can remember ever seeing or meeting him. And did he really travel all the way from Lincolnshire to watch Rovers play?

I genuinely don’t know any of the facts, but I have my suspicions.