Something very strange happened yesterday. I didn’t attend the ‘Miracle at the Mem’ (Memorial Stadium) when my old team Bristol Rovers scored the seven goals required to confirm an impossible promotion against Scunthorpe United and nor did I listen to it on the radio. But I did, from time to time, follow Rovers’ progress on the Sky Sports App. Having over a long period become totally detached from my old club, I felt no emotion as the goals flooded in, yet having lost the emotional attachment, I always believed Rovers were score the requisite number of goals required. I only wish I’d been able to treat the game with such certainty in the days I used to go. Imagine how much stress could have been avoided and how many years of my life I have now lost?
In brief, my disillusion with The Gas began in 2006 when there was a traumatic boardroom split. I was involved in the club in a very minor way and chose the wrong side. I was removed from writing for the matchday programme and, mysteriously also removed from a column I wrote for the Bristol Post which, to the best of my knowledge, wasn’t owned and controlled by the directors of Rovers, but it was they who instigated my removal. I should have just got over it and moved on but, you know me, I didn’t.
The new owner was a dullard millionaire builder called Nick Higgs who during his mediocre – at best – tenure saw him ban a former director, a close friend of mine, for ‘consistent criticism’. God knows what Higgs would have done to my friend if his criticism has been inconsistent. A drive-by shooting? Torture by Voodoo? Being forced to watch Mrs Brown’s Boys every day, forever? In the end, a ban was regarded as sufficient and seeing the world only in black and white, I thought, “Right, if my friend is banned, then I won’t be going either. That’ll show ’em.” Of course, it showed ’em nothing at all and my subsequent absences were met with the apathy they so richly deserved. In the end, the only person who suffered – and I use the word inadvisedly – was me. It wasn’t the football club I missed: it was the people who made the club, my fellow fans, many of whom were – are – much-loved friends.
My friend’s ban was lifted under the new club ownership of Jordanian banker Wael Al Qadi, I returned to the Mem and even started writing for the programme again. For a while, it felt like I was, to quote the great bard Gary Barlow, back for good, but despite everything something had gone. I no longer had the aforementioned emotional attachment, even when ‘we’ scored a goal. And at the end of the 2017/18 season, I decided that enough was enough. I doubted whether I needed to be there anymore and as they say in fooball, ‘If in doubt, kick if out’, and I kicked it out, my active support for the Rovers was over.
My decision, not made by way of some grand, pretentious statement and in any event was more evolutionary than Big Bang, was met with the apathy it deserved. It was a ‘Meh’ moment. Not even a pin prick of local history. I’m writing like I expected the new owner, the staff, the players and of course supporters to get on bended knee to beg me to come back. Trust me, I wasn’t. I know my place in life on the outside, not even looking in. I was merely reinforcing my accepted life status as a no mark loner, incapable of making a good decision, a hopeless failure who would be better left alone. I’ve always felt like that about my life. Yesterday was, for me, proof that I was right all along. My ‘real life’ was very different from everyone else’s. The only messages I got were from people who weren’t at the game and in the main weren’t even Gasheads asking if I was. The world, the minuscule, insignificant part of which I lived in, had moved on.
As well as having a new owner, Rovers are now managed by Joey Barton, an all round wrong ‘un who has been much in the news in recent times. For reasons I cannot refer to for legal reasons, I could never support a club managed by Barton. I’ll say no more than that, except to say I don’t know if that would have been my pre 2006 position. I’d like to think it would have been, but it really doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. However, hearing and reading numerous media references to ‘Joey Barton’s Bristol Rovers’ literally makes me feel a little bit sick. I know how some lazy journalists work because, whilst the nuts and bolts of the club are owned by Al Qadi and the manager is Barton, the spirit of the club belongs to the supporters, no one else.
Yesterday’s seven goal demolition of Scunthorpe and what it meant will doubtless be talked about in the same way as 2nd May 1990 when Rovers, based at Twerton Park in Bath, defeated The Big Club from Ashton Gate 3-0 to secure promotion to what we now call The Championship. And quite right too. Obviously, Barton had a massive role in putting the team together and Al Qadi in covering the vast financial losses. It’s their success, too. But yesterday’s win was for the fans who will always be there, come rain or shine, from famine to gluttony. Managers and owners are here today, gone tomorrow and this lot are no different.
I’ve made my own spiritual peace with Bristol Rovers Football Club and who is to say what tomorrow will bring? These are the great days for Gasheads and they need to be enjoyed in the here and now and then stored away in life’s great memory bank.
I miss some of my old friends at the club far more than they miss me but then I was the one who walked away leaving them behind. I don’t regret a thing because I did what I believed to be right, even though I was the only one, which suggests everyone else thinks I wasn’t! Never say never again? Almost certainly. But honestly: who cares? Not you, dear reader, and quite right too. #UTG
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