As Captain Sensible put it (one for the kids, there), I’m glad it’s all over. Despite the fact that Bristol Rovers v Gillingham was one of the very worst games of football I have ever seen on one of the worst pitches I have ever seen, despite the illusory green colour, yesterday was one of the emotional days I have ever felt at a football match.
The 2017/18 season represented the end of various eras at Bristol Rovers. The tragic death of Geoff Dunford cast a huge shadow over the club and ended, to all intents and purposes, the end of the Dunford era. We all have our stories to tell about Geoff and his family but no one can seriously challenge the fact that they saved the club when it was on the brink of ruin at Eastville. There would be no club for the Jordanian Al-Qadis to own had it not been for the Dunfords. Their good luck in inheriting a brilliant young manager like Darrell Clarke and then see him work miracles with a tiny League One budget must never be forgotten. Think what he might achieve with a competitive budget.
At Geoff Dunford’s side for pretty well all of those 25 years was Nick Day. Since our exile at Twerton Park, Nick has been OUR PA man. Through thin and thinner, Nick has seen it all. For 25 years on the mic, he received not one penny by way of payment, not even, I don’t think, a complementary pasty! And he was not just the man on the mic on the pitch, he was the voice of every social event the club held, as well as the compere of the sponsorship raffle. As the club moves into the 21st century and employs generic TV presenters to host events, like last weeks corporate event at the Lloyds Amphitheatre, it will do well to remember a club that ignores its history takes a step towards being another bland product.
Nick Day was the voice at the Mem on 9/11 when islamic fascists demolished New York’s World Trade Centre. We were at home to Birmingham City that night. The game really did not matter but on the big occasion, Nick rose seemingly effortlessly to capture the mood. As he did following the death of Geoff Dunford, giving an astonishing speech in front of a big crowd, in my view the high point of his career on the mic. The man for the big occasion, always.
I am so sorry he has stepped down but then again, I suppose it is better when people ask why you are leaving then later asking why you aren’t. If I had been one of the owners or the new suits who run the club, I’d have been on bended knee asking him to carry on, but that’s me with my old fashioned 20th century mindset. I genuinely believed in the notion of a family club and for a while, back in the dark days of the early 2000s, we truly became one, literally fighting to save the club. Many of those people who did the fighting have moved on now and their names are largely forgotten. But not by me. I am very proud of the role we played and despite the subsequent bungling efforts of Nick Higgs to wreck the legacy, the club is still very much alive and kicking.
I’m moving on, too. I started writing for the programme in 1999 and it was the greatest privilege of my writing life. In 2006, I was one of two Gasheads who were taken on to provide the Fans View in the Bristol Post on the back of my work but when the club tore itself apart, I chose the “wrong” side who sought to make the club better and more sustainable. I was summoned to a discreet meeting by a lowly Post journalist to say I was being fired from my (unpaid) column following representations from the football club. I later found how it happened and who was responsible and, I’m afraid, I could never forgive them. A small window of opportunity to write at a higher level, so to speak, was taken away never to return. Angry? Bitter? Both of those things for the best part of a decade, but now it is resignation, disillusionment and a gradual falling out of love with my club.
A wise friend said to me yesterday that I should never say never about going to another Rovers game, so I will leave that possibility open. But having said that, when I left the ground yesterday it did feel like The End.
And there is so much I want to do with the rest of my life. I spent many years utterly obsessing with Bristol Rovers, to the exclusion of just about everything else, everything else being based around the football. No more. If I ever change my mind, you will read it here first.
