Post by mehewmagic on Feb 2, 2016 11:06:16 GMT
My latest article is not yet on the Bristol Post website but here it is below.
Hope we get a reaction for the visit of Don, after Stanley whammed us (as usual).
P.s. I wrote it before I realised James Mc at the Post had done the same!
The Edge of Heaven
Back in September I wrote an article for this blog entitled ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’. We had just lost, as usual, to Accrington Stanley, and with seven games down we had only one point more than last seasons’ seemingly apocalyptic start, had scored a miserly five goals (the joint fewest in the division), were on a three game losing streak and crowds were falling. The article postulated that Darrell Clarke would most probably respond well to this mini crisis.
A draw at Plymouth Argyle raised hopes but an anaemic home loss to Pompey dumped us into 17th place. The knives were being sharpened and knitted brows were the order of the day. Three away wins on the bounce though bought DC a lot of space from the careless whispers, and despite blips along the way we’ve generally been on a fantastic upwards trajectory to make it big ever since… until playing the reverse fixture at the newly renamed Wham Stadium of course; the first double any team has ever done over a Darrell Clarke led Rovers side.
It seems like the self styled “club that wouldn’t die” just won’t let us have any divine peace. Accy have won our last six encounters (including three successive 1-0 wins in Horfield), during which we‘ve scored just a solitary goal. Curiously that goal from loanee Alex Henshall, in his sole start for us, came early in the game that was the start of the end of our 94 year unbroken tenure in the Football League. Although we were already struggling by mid-October 2013 most fans really didn’t expect a relegation battle, especially when one-up at rookie James Beattie’s winless, bottom of the table Accrington Stanley. Two goals later and our expectations REALLY were being lowered.
Reports suggest that we never really got out of bed on Saturday, and for our next game we will need to wake up before we go. Our young guns never seemed to go for it, Stanley’s midfield were given the freedom of the park, and wiser old heads were reported to be rather sluggish as though they were still working off last Christmas’s excesses.
One thing I have learnt following football is that whatever managers articulate about the dangers of away travel, the much sought after edge of heaven, where harmony, camaraderie and an overnight stay prevail, will still not guarantee a win on the road. Maybe it can help, but there are also days like Saturday when the lengths clubs go to get their players into the best possible mind and body shape seems to bear no fruit at all, unless it is a prickly pear perhaps.
When Rovers posted pictures on twitter of how good the pitch looked at 11am I thought to myself ‘wow, they got up there fast’. I should have put two and two together rather quicker and realised they had spent the night in a Lancashire hotel. The club had also posted a brilliant initiation ‘song’ from one of the new boys and whilst the venue hardly looked like an exotic Club Tropicana it was clearly filmed in something other than a bad boys dressing room. Rory Fallon had apparently been training with Rovers for a month and his hard work must have been screaming ‘I’m your man’ at DC. Rory’s Maori mum had taught him well, as he bypassed a song and performed a haka, and with a hairy chest like that no-one was going to offer him outside on a cold Blackburn night.
Another explanation of the insipid defeat could be that however well you prepare Stanley are simply a better team than us at the moment. The heady days of our first encounter with them (a 4-0 trashing in December 2006) have long since gone, and since an equally overwhelming 5-1 butchery at the Mem in April 2012 it’s been all downhill against them.
If in a cut throat top seven you truly are only as good as your last match then we really need a result against another phoenix club, AFC Wimbledon, this weekend. The Dons recently sneaked (temporarily) into the final play-off position and a plethora of teams hover around the 40+ points mark just waiting for any of the current play-off spot incumbents to have a mini-slump.
They also have an impressive away record, having lost only twice out of 14 away games, the last of which came way back in early October at high flying Oxford United.
Rovers have only suffered back-to-back league defeats three times in the last two seasons and I’ll stick my neck out to predict that once DC gets them onto the training ground this week, we won’t be seeing another such unwanted statistic this weekend.
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Martin Bull became a Gashead in 1989 and immediately fell in love with Twerton Park, standing near G pillar. Two of his six books have been about Bristol Rovers. ‘Away The Gas’ is packed full of over 50 years of ‘I was there’ away game moments, all written by fans, and ‘Print That Season! - One man’s weekly meanderings throughout Bristol Rovers’ promotion campaign of 2014-15’ is the antidote to obedient season reviews, with none of the hindsight that most writers rely on. Full details of both are available at www.awaythegas.org.uk
