BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - We've got our Rovers backPosted: May 25, 2015
By Martin Bull
Get in! We managed the almost unmanageable; an instant return to the Football League, and whilst I think the whole experience and total change of ethos is the best thing that has happened to the club for several decades, there is also sheer relief that such a long and nerve splitting season is finally over. As the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jnr. wrote, “winners win, losers have excuses”, and too many times in the past we’ve been giving excuses for failure. No one ‘deserves’ success; you have to make it.
The play-off finals have actually been incredibly fair so far. All eight of the highest league finishers are playing at Wembley this season, after no finalist lost either of their play-off legs, and although some Grimsby Town fans were gutted that they lost in a cruel way, think how we’ve been feeling.
We played 46 games, spread over eight long months, in all different weathers and on all different pitches, and ended up just one point away from the sole automatic promotion slot, and five points and five goals better than third place. In any other league that would have given us an easy promotion. But for this league the results are thrown out the window and we had to hold our nerve three more times, especially against Grimsby who could easily have won it in the first half, or even on the vagaries of those few kicks at goal. I'm pretty sure no-one could suggest that us losing on penalties would have been a fairer end to the season.
With 193 Football League seasons jointly behind them, this match, backed by a Conference promotion final record 47,029 fans, seemed more like a League Two or even League One final. Sadly all that was at stake was a return to a league that Gasheads had never seen before the dawn of this Millennium, and loyal Mariners had only seen for eight seasons. Both teams have been punching far below their historic weight for far too much of the last 15 years.
Conceding the first goal was hardly a surprise considering we had also done so in all four of our previous Football League Trophy and Play-Off Finals. Indeed, the Fishmens’s second minute poach, and our equaliser 20 minutes or so later, had me reaching for my Shrewsbury Town 2007 Play-Off DVD, such was the level of déjà vu that hit us in that frantic first half-an-hour.
As more and more players looked drained during the extra 30 minutes it looked like Daniel Leadbitter’s pace was going to be introduced on the right hand side. But the moment passed and as Chris Lines went down several times with cramp, Ollie Clarke was now seen stripped off and standing next to the Fourth Official.
The switch never happened and when Ollie finally sat back down it seemed clear that Darrell was holding back his final change for any potential penalty shoot out, with Lines high up the list of takers and determined to stay on the pitch in the absence of Ellis Harrison, one of our best dead ball finishers.
Finally the moment really did arrive, as Darrell van Gaal swapped goalkeepers, just as The Netherlands did against Costa Rica in last summer’s World Cup quarter-final. Thankfully Steve Mildenhall didn’t engage in any of Tim Krul’s crass histrionics, and although he didn’t save a penalty, maybe it was his generously proportioned presence that contributed to the only miss of the spot-kicks, by Jon-Paul Pittman?
The change was probably mind games as much as anything else as not only did Mildenhall have form, but that previous was with the Cleethorpes' massive. Mildy was the Mariners stopper back in the 2006 League Two play-off final against John Ward’s Cheltenham Town, and that day saved Grant McCann’s penalty in normal time.
The shoot-out was surprisingly uncomplicated for us, aided by the mental strength shown by our guys, not least Matty Taylor who had missed his penalty at Blundell Park on Valentine’s Day, in front of the same keeper who faced him now, just 18 yards away. Lee Brown also stepped up to the plate, with the only Rovers penalty to send the keeper the wrong way.
The vastly under-rated Brown has shown true grit before. He missed his last penalty for Rovers, at Lincoln City back in September, when he could have won the game with his 88th minute spot kick. Did he let his momentary despair affect his attitude that day? No, as within two minutes he had a shot saved, and then supplied the cross that Ellis Harrison used to win the game for Rovers, one of nine marvellous assists this season from the hugely reliable and loyal full back. Those penalties, and coming back from an early battering, summed up why we won promotion.
Although Ian Holloway’s post-match comment that the result had “given us our team back” has received most of the media coverage, it was actually his pre-match interview on BT Sport that gave a more coherent explanation of our footballing transformation, when he remarked that Darrell Clarke’s management had “given us our attitude back”.
It was this attitude, this change of ethos, that won us promotion. The win on the pitch was just football; 22 men of very similar ability kicking a pig’s bladder around. But it has been the attitude of the manager, and the squad he has recruited, that has made us proud this season, and on the pitch has given us our Rovers back. A humble attitude, a hungry attitude, a disciplined attitude, a winning attitude.
Priceless.
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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 with 40 other fans has published a new book about them -
www.awaythegas.org.ukRead more:
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