Here's the full length version of an article I wrote for the BRFC programme last season.
I haven't yet dared write about the Graydon years!!
The Atkins Diet / The Class of 2004
Ian Atkins was a man often viewed as unloveable, but he was the only Rovers manager who was able to stop the rot of the early Noughties and it was his signings which became the backbone of the wondrous double finalists of the 2006/07 season.
Whilst a diet of draws interspersed with a few wins was hardly the cuisine Rovers fans really craved, it was exactly the tough, dull broccoli we needed⌠for a while. The 2004/5 season offered up a good home record (only one loss all season, but a record 12 draws) but it was balanced with a poor away record, leading to a rare stat of not winning or losing two games in a row. The problem came when too many supporters felt it had continued for too long and that any enjoyment of watching Rovers was being drained away for a fifth season in a row.
Ian was supposed to be appointed on 19th March 2004 but his previous club, Oxford United, under the narcissistic Firoz Kassam cried foul and held up the engagement (can you think of another stadium named after an individual owner? Thought not⌠unless St. James is alive and well and makes a fortune in after dinner speaking with his hilarious Jesus anecdotes).
It wasnât until 26th April that Atkins officially took the reigns, with only two matches of the season left.
A 3-0 trashing at Hull City in front of 22,000 was hardly the best away start but things did get better as he swept the rotten dressing room floor clean.
If there has been a single summer in the new millennium that has ultimately turned a failing Bristol Rovers around it was 2004.
Whilst the summer of 2014 was certainly important as the first steps in our escape from non-league, Darrell Clarke built his squad slowly throughout the season. Atkins built his fast, but it then took a long time to work. You could argue it still didnât completely work until 2007 under his successors Paul Trollope and Lennie Lawrence, whose double finalists had been tweaked and improved from the days of Atkins.
If Gerry Francisâs quadruple swoop for Nigel Martyn, Andy Reece, Ian Holloway and Devon White in August 1987 proved to be one of the best monthâs business in my lifetime, then itâs even more remarkable that in one pre-season, 2004, the much maligned Atkins personally brought in Stuart Campbell, Craig Disley, Steve Elliott, Craig Hinton, James âPlayer-of-the-seasonâ Hunt, Aaron Lescott and Richard Walker.
This âClass of 2004â endowed Rovers with our last golden era of stable club men. By the time their Roversâ days were over Cams had smashed the 300 appearances barrier, Elliott had muscled his way past 250, Disley and Lescott agonisingly fell just eight games short of the 250 landmark, and Hinton and Walker bubbled away just under the 200 mark.
Jamie Forrester, Paul Trollope, Robbie Ryan and later Chris Carruthers and Scott Shearer were also brought in by Atkins. Most played their part in his first stable season, although surely Rovers were suffering from a grave bout of âTV Gogglesâ when signing Ryan. Robbie is presumably the only player in our history who can boast that the last match they played before becoming a Pirate was an FA Cup Final where he (allegedly) marked Cristiano Ronaldo.
The reality was somewhat more prosaic as we witnessed a man devoid of any fitness or ability chase shadows around a tiny section of the pitch for 65 appearances. I suspect that at one point a Rovers official may have even taken him into a windowless room in the musty, clanking bowels of the Dribuild Stand, shone a spotlight in his eyes and demanded he prove his real identity. Like a scene from The Marathon Man, I could imagine the question âDid Ali Dia put you up to this?â being asked over and over again to the bemused left back as his teeth were agonisingly wrenched out one by one.
He was also one of worst players Iâve ever seen, and his signing became the stuff of legend, inspired by our scoutâs 16 year old son reacting to his contract expiring whilst playing Championship Manager. I kid you not.
From one awful Left Back to one excellent one; if Robbie Ryan was Justin Lee Collins, Aaron Lescott was Alan Carr, playing without moaning in whatever position he was asked to (usually Left Midfield or Left Back). A sadly forgotten stalwart, with 242 solid appearances in six years as a Pirate, and despite not finding the net for almost 200 games, the floodgates opened in the twilight of his blue and white days, with five goals in his final 44 games.
Looking back it is almost surprising that Atkins was sacked on 22nd September 2005, as although Rovers had dropped to 19th, theyâd only lost four out of nine and it was the first really rocky spell of his 18 months in charge. Whilst he certainly didnât help himself with his prickly nature and allegedly poor man management skills, Atkins was a victim of the high expectations that Rovers fans still had in League Two even though all the evidence confirmed that Rovers continued to be a poorly run club with no God given right to be successful in the fourth tier. And yet again a BRFC managerâs P45 was ultimately dished out when the dough was haemorrhaging, with steadily dwindling attendances (barely crawling over 5,000 fans), marking the time to say goodbye.
Atkins gave a debut to 15 year old Scott Sinclair and oversaw the youthful development of Chris Lines, but generally preferred experience over youth, and for a man who was responsible for bringing in eight players who went on to make over 100 appearances for the Gas he seemed to be strangely reticent to let his charges get on with their business, preferring to chop and change the team at the start of his second full season in charge and bring in several non-contract players.
If the arrival of Jefferson Louis (the man who put the âjourneyâ into journeyman) in the summer of 2005 was a warning shot of impending cerebral meltdown, the death nail was the tame 4-0 loss at minnows Chester City, managed by ex-Pirate Keith Curle.
Funnily enough Curle was sacked himself just five months weeks later, the victim of an extreme cycle of boom and bust results, as only three losses in his first 20 games were followed by 11 losses in the next 12, and a miraculous plummet from fourth to 19th. Bizarrely his replacement, Mark Wright, in his second of three stints at the Seals, managed to take them to the very bottom of the division, but facing a humiliating return to non-league prompted five wins on the bounce and a scrabble to a comfortable lower mid-table finish.
Ian only managed once more after leaving us, doing an excellent emergency job at Torquay United to save them from relegation in 2006, but was replaced after only 29 games, and turned down an offer to be Director of Football instead. Since then he has successfully worked as a Chief Scout in Europe for Sunderland, Everton and currently Aston Villa.
Whilst I didnât feel particularly sorry for him at the time my sentiment has softened in the intervening years especially after reading an interview which allowed a glimpse at the man behind the mask, as he explained, âI had three or four clubs asking for my services. I chose Bristol Rovers over clubs from a higher division because I thought they were a big club with potential to get to the Championship, with a great fan base, but it was a big mistake... The board was split and I was caught in the middle. It is a fantastic club with great fans, but I wish I had never gone there.â
Although the Atkins method was a hard slimming pill to swallow, his âlegacyâ was startlingly substantial and he must be credited for managing to do what Gerry Francis, Garry Thompson (again!) and Ray Graydon all failed to achieve in the hitherto never explored bottom division; namely, mid-table steadiness.
The middle of the road isnât always as bad as itâs made out to be.