Gas away days - The good, the bad and the just plain wrong

Gas away days - The good, the bad and the just plain wrong - Part 1


The Good

Shrewsbury Town‘s old ground, Gay Meadow, holds a special place in the heart of many Gasheads. I’m still not 100% sure how it started but for many years in the late 80’s and early 90’s the tradition was to smuggle in cartons of Weetabix (other wheat based breakfast products are available…) and throw them onto the pitch behind the goal.

It reminds me of the old joke about a spate of murders that were happening in a city far away. Every crime scene included a half eaten bowl of Weetabix left near the body. The Police concluded that a cereal killer was on the loose.

By the time I had managed to drag myself and my best friend up there in 2002, the Weetabix craze was over. Sometimes it had got a bit out of hand, with the oppo goalie getting pelted with wheat biscuits until his goal net was full of them, so the Police cracked down on the Class A contraband. One contributor to my book, ‘Away The Gas’, remembered “seeing the Police stopping and searching all the Gasheads, resulting in mountains of confiscated Weetabix stored up outside the turnstiles!”.

My away trips have been nothing if random, and this was one of the most random of them all, a trip from South London to Shropshire on a freezing cold January night via an incredibly unreliable Fiat Tipo (1989 European Car of the Year - really?!). In one of the worst seasons ever seen by a Rovers fan this could have been labelled utterly crazy, but since Gerry Francis had resigned on Christmas Eve 2001, unable to stop the rot at a club that still hadn’t reached its nadir, Rovers had actually gone three matches unbeaten under caretaker boss Garry Thompson, taking seven points and scoring seven goals in the process. I almost expected seven brides to stride out onto Gay Meadow to marry seven brothers, or even seven sisters.

During a pitiful October and November Rovers had scored just one goal in 10 League matches. With Gerry gone Nathan Ellington or Sergio Melvin Ommel, or both, had their names on the scoresheet in 12 of Rovers’ next 15 league matches.

The Netherlander Ommel actually had a very good goal record for Rovers, with eight goals in 15 league starts and five sub cameos, after being brought to Rovers from Icelandic football by King Gerry in November 2001. Due to his distressing addiction to air miles he left at the end of the season to return to ex-club Telstar (now merged to form Stormvogels Telstar) and later also played for Dutch amateurs Quick Boys.

At KR Rekyjavik he had been honoured to play alongside Moussa Dagnogo. Dagnogo is famously one the best Rovers players of this new Millennium, electrifying Gasheads with his 31 minutes of fame in two sub appearances. His birthday (the 30th of January) is still celebrated as a national holiday in the Ivory Coast, whilst France are thinking of renaming Charles De Gaulle airport as ‘Dagnogo International‘.

I remember a pretty deserted away terrace (less than 3,500 overall were there) and some patchy fog making it difficult to even see the other end of the pitch. But what we unquestionably did witness was a scuffy winning goal from Sergio right in front of us. That goal, when struggling for League survival, was just as astonishing to us as a Messi pearler would be to a Barcelona fan.

Bristol Rovers play at Shrewsbury Town‘s current ground, The New Meadow, on Saturday 17th December

The plan for this season? Bowl up to Shropshire on the M5, smuggle in some Weetabix, spoon in a couple of chances and milk the victory for all it‘s worth.



Our third shortest trip of the season is up to Walsall whose ground can handily be spotted from the elevated section of the M6.

My only previous visit there was the 5-0 hammering we gave them in March 2009, with an unlikely brace from the free scoring Aaron Lescott, who had previously never scored in 198 appearances for Rovers. Aaron is a sadly forgotten stalwart, with 242 solid appearances in six years as a Gashead, and five goals in his final 44 games.

Part of me doesn’t want to make the short trip North this season as I don’t want to spoil that memory.

This win, alongside a Rickie Lambert hat-trick in our first ever win at Hereford United four days previously, was so good that Screen Soccer released a special double header DVD of the two thrashings. I was hideously late for the game at Edgar Street and after struggling to even get into the locked-up ground I can be spotted on the DVD being escorted along the pitch side to the away end just as Sir Rickie smashed a free kick into the net as I approached. If I tell you he scored in the 26th minute you’ll realise just how late I was…

Bristol Rovers play at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium on Saturday 21st January

The plan for this season? Unfurl a huge banner of Aaron Lescott’s face to scare the bejabbers out of them, and plunder a goal whilst they are still in shock.

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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

Bradford City for the really unique ground

Doesn't have to be recent past.

a lot of my best memories are from early 90's.

i was abroad for that game.  weird that we beat them so easily for such an historic game, and we were already relegated.

QI stat - Rovers played the first League game at the Old Den, and the last.

Probably should have added the first game was 1920 and the last one 1993.  wonder what the odds are of it being us both times?  Not that high I guess as we were in the same division as them both times (obviously).

won't we be in the PL when the UWE is ready?

Gillingham purely because it's only a 30 minute drive from home !!

Did you get to the ground in 02 to be told to go home again as well?

No.  racial abuse in 1999 from an old grannie.  and general bad vibes in the whole stinking town.

Walsall, 1987/88 season I think. We won 3-0 with two very early goals. One chap came in late asking the score and refused to believe us. Thankfully we later got the third otherwise he may have gone home thinking we drew.