BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - The company of strangersPosted: April 23, 2015
By Martin Bull
We matched the all-time Conference Premier record of 19 unbeaten away games in a row on Saturday, but it is a completely hollow ‘achievement’ after metaphorically snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I’ve witnessed four away draws this season. If we had instead won two and lost two of those games we wouldn’t possess that record but we would be top of the league. 16 stalemates, 12 of them away, may really cost us this season, and two of them have come from late Dover Athletic equalisers.
Indeed it was the perfect trip to remind myself of my friends blog ‘Go Mad or Stop Caring’ where Matthew Foster, nudged by ’the wife’, often ends up evaluating the away day as ‘a good day out
ruined slightly stained by 90 minutes of football’.
Some will say that a draw at the sloping pitch of a team with the fifth best home record in the league is not a bad day, but it really was a must-win, and the expectations of Gasheads obviously rose when we were one up and Barnet were faced with the opposite circumstances.
Any regular reader of my analysis will know I have consistently supported Darrell Clarke from the start, but equally I’m not afraid to pipe up when I think he got it seriously wrong.
The second I got there, after a long and aspirated tramp around two rugby pitches to the away end - think Aldershot, and saw the very dry pitch, the flags reacting to a curious swirling breeze, Adam Dawson nowhere to be seen and Tom Lockyer still mysteriously keeping Daniel Leadbitter out, I thought it was all wrong.
Those conditions were crying out for pace and playing it on the ground, yet our line-up deliberately eschewed any fleet footedness we had, and the players hoofed it in the air. Nathan Blissett was supposed to be a third striker but it just stretched the trio too far apart across the front line, gave no central focus for our aerial balls, and left a shocking lack of width. Three up front has never worked this season and I’m not only still disappointed that it happened again, but also at the treatment Dawson, who wasn't even named in the squad for what would have been his last game on loan.
Long balls, hopeful balls, percentage balls. Quite a lot of balls. If you play like that on a parched, bobbly pitch you might as well just give up on having any tangible tactics, unless you consciously want to call that a method and take pleasure in the ball bouncing everywhere, and their lumpy centre backs winning bags of headers.
This hopeful percentage game was not only dire to watch, but more importantly was never a technique that could attempt to control a vital match. We don't play like that at home, and we haven't done that during three very impressive wins on the trot, with an aggregate score of 11-2. I don't see why we didn't pick a team to retain possession and use pace, passing and dribbling to win, just like we have for the last, very successful, 270 minutes we have played. If Dover want to play that game, fair enough, but why did we have to try to match them?
We looked in complete control after our goal, against a team visibly tiring from their considerable efforts in the first hour, but we inexplicably let them back in the game, and invited pressure with some poor clearances and weak defending. Gifting late corners to a decent home team like Dover was verging on suicidal.
I've never seen so many Gasheads leave a ground so deathly quiet. No (outward) anger, no booing. Just so, so, so disappointed not only at the result, but also the performance and both the timing and dubious legitimacy of the sickening late equaliser. Our best chance of 'success' for many, many years and we messed it up.
Fortunately the bucolic beauty of the walk back to the car tempered our disappointment; along the River Dour (dour by name, but distinguished by nature), past the exquisite Georgian Crabble Corn Mill, and finished off with a 20 minute chill out watching a cover of Coots in the middle of watercourse, half being fed by daddy Coot, and half being kept warm by mummy Coot. As an agreeable pub pie followed and was washed down with a fresh pint of local ale, a chat with a random Gashead reminded me of the value of the company of strangers, and slowly the (blue) mist cleared from my eyes.
At this point you may be thinking I’m round the bend or indifferent but I can assure you I am still passionately annoyed at that performance. But we surely need these added extras at the majority of away days, because if we travel away expecting complete domination and a bright and breezy 200 mile journey home, we will often be setting ourselves up for a fall. If we wanted almost guaranteed ’success’ we could become plastic Arsenal fans, or watch our noisy neighbours waste £65 million, only for them to finally realise, rather like we have, that an efficient manager, with carefully selected, well drilled and motivated players is actually more important than money and vanity.
So what now? Well, the weekend showed that almost anything can happen in football, and certainly that one goal is rarely enough, so we dust ourselves down and go again. As usual. Gateshead have not lost away to any of the top six teams (except us), and have scored in all but four of their 22 away games, and although they are currently decimated by injuries, the glare of the BT Sport cameras and the pressure of a gigantic crowd at The Hive could well prove harder than some pundits may think.
There will be more Gasheads at a sold-out Mem than for any home league match since 1980 and despite the relative sadness that may be prevalent come 7pm, being in with a genuine chance of top spot on the final game of the season is not an achievement to induce too much melancholy. We still have several chances to escape this place and despite the wonders of the River Dour and the Crabble area, I dearly hope that will have been our sole trip to Dover.
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Martin Bull became a Gashead in 1989 and immediately fell in love with Twerton Park, standing near G pillar. In 2006 he wrote, photographed and published the first independent book about the artist Banksy. Having been exiled for much of his past, away games have always been special for him; so much so that he has edited a new book about them -
www.awaythegas.org.ukRead more:
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