In the year of our Lord, 2018, I made the conscious decision to step away from actively supporting my only club, Bristol Rovers. Off-the-field squabbles, some serious but most petty, had tarnished my love, and it was love, for my club and I was not enjoying it anymore. Aside from meeting friends before, during and after matches, there was nothing, certainly not the football, that I looked forward to. If anything, a part of me was beginning to dread the actual football and, catastrophically for a supporter, I was beginning to watch games with both eyes open, almost unbiased, although not quite a neutral, realising that actually not every referee was as biased towards the opposition as I was to my team. Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.
Because I am still in touch with people who are still at the club, in a variety of capacities, I still have a good idea of what’s going on and, occasionally when I look at the fans internet forums I realise that people are still arguing about the same things I was arguing about in the early 2000s. The managers, the players, the ramshackle state of the Memorial Stadium and the terrible owners dominate online conversations between people who use often humorous titles in order to hide their identity. But nothing ever changes.
Bristol Rovers is now owned by a Kuwaiti businessman Hussain AlSaeed, who bought the club from a Jordanian playboy/man baby and banker (at least I think people called him a banker) Wael al-Qadi, after his money ran out. Under al-Qadi and his placemen, the club shed its identity and all but abandoned its history, removing all those people, including volunteers, associated with the previous regime run by clueless local builder Nick Higgs whose presence was synonymous and instrumental with the long-term decline of the club. The fans are revolting – as in the peasants are angry, taking up arms, rebelling and not the other definition – but then, they always are.
My love affair with the club effectively ended in 2006 when, as a lowly, extremely minor figure at the club, I took sides during a boardroom bust up, which saw the establishment see off a group of visionary supporters who had a plan to make the club both sustainable and successful. I took the side of the voices for change, which I felt was the right side to improve the club, lost, and found my love for the club draining away. We all lost.
An old friend, a very active volunteer worker at the club, had walked away a few years previously after an attempted assault (someone tried to punch him) while he was was in the stadium, working for the club (for nothing). He told me that he had “lost the emotional attachment with the club” and feared it would never come back. I replied that I didn’t think that was possible and that I would always love the club above all, but what happened to him later happened to me. In the end, there was nothing left.
My biggest mistake was to get involved in the first place. Anxious to help, I would carry out all kinds of work for the club, including the removal of frost covers on matchdays and arranging fundraising events for the club. But when ‘my’ side lost, I felt I was now on the outside looking in. In the past, I just concentrated on the football which, let’s face it, is why you go to games in the first place, but my involvement with the club – and I cannot emphasise enough that I was a very minor player – tainted my feelings about what was happening on the pitch.
One thing that riled me was what I perceived to be the apathy of fans. They didn’t seem to care who the owner was, nor what his motives were, as long as the team won. Fan ownership, or at least part-ownership, was something I was persuaded was not just a good thing but essential for a lower league club like the Rovers seemed to matter only when the team was failing. Fans would tolerate anything, whether it was a local visionless, autocratic bungler, a populist playboy who craved adulation or a distant middle eastern businessman, incapable or maybe just unwilling to communicate with fans, as long as the points on the pitch stacked up, they could live with it. But apart from the odd success here and there, briefly restoring the club to its historical place in English football’s third tier, it’s been downhill all the way.
In order to arrest the team’s – and maybe the club’s – decline, club legend Darrell Clarke returned in the summer to manage Bristol Rovers, a decision that was widely praised by the fans. A few of us well away from the action believed that what we saw as a populist appointment rather than a footballing one said it would end in tears but our relative distance suggested it might just be a feeling we had, one not based on reality. Darrell, a genuinely great bloke who has been through hell in his private life, would succeed, even if he needed time, which hopefully he would get. As we approach winter, the signs are not good.
I’m told that internet forum users are clubbing together in order to buy a flag to wave during matches, basically telling the current owners to bugger off. I wish them well because the current ownership model, which is to say a wealthy overseas bloke who just fancied owning a football club, any club really, isn’t one I have much faith in. Some ‘in-the-know’ folk believe there are wealthy consortia out there who are just waiting to throw money at a loss-making League Two club, playing at a shambolic apology of a football ground with piss poor facilities. The argument must be that either the grass is greener with new owners or they couldn’t be any worse. Well, good luck with the flag-waving.
I was persuaded long ago that the future for supporters was through independent supporter trusts having influence at football clubs, as with Wimbledon and Exeter City. From what little I know, I’d have thought the formation of a trust would be far more effective than waving a flag, but if said flag forces the removal of the current owners, I would be more than prepared to consume a large portion of humble pie.
Whatever happens, I’ll be watching from a distance, at least hoping that one day the club chooses a modern, progressive, sustainable and ultimately successful plan for the future. Just because it failed in 2006 doesn’t mean it might not work in 2026 but that will be up to not just the owners but the fans who have far more power than they realise, if only they care to exercise it. The only alternative is to carry on as now, moving from one useless owner to another, devoid and even afraid of change, in a football world of boom and bust.
Of course, I miss my friends at the football, some of whom I rarely if ever see these days. It wasn’t always the case, post 2006, that I was happy with my decision to walk away from football, but I now know it was one of my better decisions. I hope my old Gashead friends get the better football club they desire. It may take more than a flag to bring about change, but maybe that’s just the start and that they will then organise for change and not merely call for change using pseudonyms on internet forums. One idiot I used to know at the Rovers once said: “The forums will become a massive part of the future at Bristol Rovers!” They didn’t and they never will. It’s just howling at the moon. Been there, done it; it’s bollocks.
The al-Qadi regime, as we said, stripped away the heart of the club, removing staff members and volunteers associated with the previous regime. And unforgivably, appointed Joey Barton, despite everything we knew about him. What we know today makes it an even worse decision. Essentially, they forgot about, or worse buried, the club’s history and what it all stood for. Today, little has changed, with a club run by a Kuwaiti businessman and his hired hands, none of whom have any aspects of Bristol Rovers past or present coursing through their veins. That’s why the club has no heart and soul, other than on the terraces. And a fight for the heart and soul of the club is actually one fans can win, but only if they want it enough. Anonymous voices on the internet can only take you so far and frankly that’s not very far at all.
