Post by harrybuckle on May 21, 2019 20:30:36 GMT
Seasonal Review 2018-19 by Stephen Byrne
Ultimately, avoiding relegation proved a successful conclusion to a disappointing season, Rovers’ third back in third-tier English football. On the evening of 3rd March, as Rovers celebrated a 4-0 victory at home to Blackpool, the largest of the campaign, the side still languished five points inside the relegation zone. However, three of the clubs in the bottom four that evening were to extricate themselves from this position, as thirteen clubs battled to survive one of the tightest relegation battles in living memory. Southend, in thirteenth place on 3rd March, only survived the drop by beating play-off-bound Sunderland on the final day, whilst Plymouth and Scunthorpe, in 15th and 16th places respectively at that stage, played each other on the final day and both were relegated. Wimbledon nine points inside the bottom four with eleven games to play, avoided relegation, with Rovers as high as fifteenth in the table after a final-day home victory over promoted Barnsley.
Ahead of the new season, manager Darrell Clarke brought in a raft of new signings, each aimed at strengthening perceived weaker areas of the squad. Midfielders Sam Matthews from Bournemouth and Ed Upson of MK Dons were due to add creativity and gravitas to the heart of the side, St Mirren’s Gavin Reilly could add goals and Tareiq Holmes-Dennis, from Premier League side Huddersfield Town, would contribute panache and a touch of class. The signing of Holmes-Dennis proved a lasting asset left behind when Clarke left, adding skill and creativity to a side bolstered from January by the signing of Jonson Clarke-Harris, who almost single-handedly rescued Rovers from the throes of relegation with his spring flurry of goals. Shrewsbury’s excellent 2017-18 campaign having not quite earned the Shropshire side promotion, Alex Rodman and Stefan Payne joined The Gas, to be joined later by Abu Ogogo, who arrived via Coventry City, whilst two early-season loan signings saw goalkeeper Jack Bonham and young striker Alex Jakubiak arrive from Brentford and Watford respectively.
On the other hand, the old guard was beginning to leave. Full-back Lee Brown, whose goal against Dagenham had earned final-day promotion in 2016, left for Portsmouth, for whom he scored in a penalty shoot-out in the Football League Trophy Final, the second time he had scored in a Wembley shoot-out. Top goal-scorer Ellis Harrison was sold to Ipswich Town, with whom he experienced the disappointment of relegation, and Rory Gaffney joined aspiring non-league side Salford City. Clarke himself was to follow these players out of the club in December, after the campaign had begun to follow a different path from that which had been anticipated. As the season drew to a close, rumours were rife that both club captain Tom Lockyer and longest-serving player Chris Lines were due to leave.
Indeed, the season had begun poorly. Despite the excitement of a 2-0 victory at FC Eindhoven on the club’s Netherlands tour, Ollie Clarke scoring ten minutes before half-time and Kyle Bennett adding a second two minutes from time, the pre-season matches offered a hint of troubled times ahead. Most evidently, as Rovers stumbled to a 4-0 home defeat at the hands of League Two side Exeter City, former player Hiram Boateng scoring the third goal, it was clear that goals were at a premium and that defensive frailties could prove a liability. As it was, Matt Godden scored for Peterborough United in the opening minute of the first League game; Rovers lost four of their opening five League fixtures.
What slowly evolved over the campaign was one of the tightest relegation battles in recent memory, as thirteen clubs were still in very real danger of relegation deep into April. Rovers’ first home win of a troubling campaign came towards the end of October, the 2-0 victory coming against a Wimbledon side which had looked dead and buried by Christmas before enjoying a remarkable revival. Rovers dropped in and out of the bottom four, stooping as low as twenty-third on occasions. Amidst the enthusiasm which greeted Rovers’ largest victory, a 4-0 thrashing of Blackpool in March, was the realisation that the club was still five points inside the relegation zone, albeit with a game in hand. Rovers’ League goals tally of 47 was the second worst in 2018-19 in the division, yet the defensive partnership of Craig and Lockyer, aided by the reliable Bonham in goal, ensured that only fifty goals were conceded in the League, a figure bettered by only three clubs.
Conceding late goals was part of the issue. Accrington Stanley, Portsmouth, Walsall and Burton Albion all scored very late winning goals, whilst Peterborough equalised in the final seconds of the 2-2 draw at The Mem in January. However, as Rovers’ form improved through the season, the late goals began to swing in the club’s favour: Gavin Reilly glanced home a very late equaliser in the draw at Plymouth in March; after Ched Evans had been sent off at The Mem, James Clarke’s goal four minutes into stoppage time earned a dramatic 2-1 victory at home to Fleetwood Town; and Alex Rodman struck Rovers’ final day winner against Barnsley deep into time added on. Rovers’ goals appeared to come in bursts: the side was 2-0 up in twenty minutes at Wycombe in August, full-back James Clarke and central defender Tony Craig both scoring; the team scored three goals in sixteen first-half minutes at home to Coventry City; and captain Tom Lockyer’s third League goal of the season enabled Rovers to lead 2-0 just ten minutes into the Boxing Day match at Walsall.
On 13th December, following a run of seven losses in ten matches in all competitions, Rovers took the decision to part with Darrell Clarke, their most successful manager of recent years. The double promotion feeling distant, the manager left with the club four points inside the relegation zone. Initially replaced from within by defensive coach Graham Coughlan, a run of three victories in five matches under the caretaker manager took the side out of the relegation zone, at which point, on 6th January 2019, Irishman Coughlan, whose lengthy playing career had seen him play for Plymouth Argyle against Rovers, was appointed manager on a two-and-a-half-year contract. He brought in Coventry’s Abu Ogogo and Jonson Clarke-Harris, a midfielder and striker respectively, signings viewed initially with some scepticism but which proved master-strokes. The latter, whom Coughlan had known from his coaching days at Southend, scored nine goals in his first nine League matches in a Rovers shirt, lifting the side clear of the relegation trap-door and scoring a hat-trick in the March demolition of Blackpool. It was Clarke-Harris whose stoppage-time winner in April defeated relegated Bradford City and eased Rovers to safety, aided by Players’ Player of the Year Ollie Clarke’s late equaliser six days later at Wimbledon which took Rovers to the mythically safe fifty-point mark.
In fact, Blackpool proved the most popular side to play in 2018-19. Rovers had won 3-0 at Bloomfield Road in November, Ollie Clarke’s two second-half goals coming either side of a Craig volley. The return match at The Mem in March was the day Clarke-Harris proved he could lead Rovers’ attack, adding goals as no striker had done since Harrison’s departure; he scored after six, thirty-seven and sixty-eight minutes for his first ever hat-trick, before Liam Sercombe scored Rovers’ fourth in stoppage-time. On the other hand, Doncaster proved tough adversaries. In a division dominated by the strength of Luton and the wallowing big names of Sunderland, Pompey and Charlton, Donny were easily the most devastating opposition the club faced, scoring four times in each match. Apart from the 3-1 defeat at Charlton in November, when Karlan Grant scored the third goal in the final seconds, and a 2-0 home defeat against play-off finalists Sunderland, Rovers lost no League fixtures all season by more than a goal, except against Donny. A 4-0 thumping at The Mem was followed by a one-sided 4-1 defeat at The Keepmoat, in which James Coppinger’s two goals in the opening twelve minutes made him, at the age of thirty-eight, the second oldest opponent to score twice in a League fixture against the club.
Rovers’ club record number of home League defeats, 11 both in 1947-48 and during the relegation season of 1992-93 was equalled in the Easter Monday 1-0 home loss to fellow strugglers Rochdale. The former Rovers midfielder Matty Lund scored relegation candidates Scunthorpe’s winner at The Mem in November. In fact, Rovers lost at home to Southend United, Walsall, Scunthorpe United, Gillingham and Wycombe Wanderers, yet won away to all five. With just six home League wins all season, marginally better than the four home wins enjoyed in the 1980-81 relegation campaign at Eastville, Rovers clearly struggled on their home patch. The much-improved state of the pitch at The Memorial Stadium was reflected in Rovers’ staff being awarded the Grounds Team of the Season award for League One; and yet home performances were regarded as consistently poor. However, Rovers’ reliance on Young Player of the Year, goalkeeper Bonham is best illustrated by the fact that he kept fifteen clean sheets in League One alone, despite his side spending a great deal of the season hovering around the relegation trap door. Yet, Rovers recorded a sixth successive away victory at Oxford United, the first time the club has ever won away to any single side in six successive League visits.
One indication of Rovers’ woes was that, until late March, Chris Lines had been the only substitute to score. In fact, Lines’ goal against Pompey, came from the penalty-spot, this being the sixth time a Rovers replacement had converted a League penalty, and moments later he became the fifth Rovers substitute to be red-carded. Another player sent off was loanee Joe Martin, who was to score a stunning volley at Charlton, but who lasted just seventy minutes at Shrewsbury on his first appearance, equalling a dubious record set in 2002 by Wayne Carlisle; Rovers led at the time, but drew 1-1, Daniel Leadbitter conceding an own goal to add to own goals given away in other fixtures by Craig and James Clarke. Clarke-Harris took two penalties at Portsmouth, scoring one and missing the other; another penalty-taker was Tom Nichols, the striker’s only goal of the campaign coming from the spot after eight minutes of the fixture at home to his former club Peterborough United in January. The following month, Shrewsbury’s Dave Edwards contrived to come on as a substitute replacing another substitute, and then get sent off.
As British football continued to become more cosmopolitan, a plethora of players from a range of nationalities appeared against Rovers. Charlton’s Igor Vetekele was the second Angolan international to oppose Rovers in the League; Bryan Oviedo of Sunderland was the first Costa Rican to do so and Doncaster goalkeeper, Marko Maroši the third Slovakian; Bevis Mugabi, who played for Yeovil Town in a Football League Trophy game, was the first Ugandan international to oppose Rovers in any competition, and Swansea, in the same tournament, fielded teenager Jordi Govea, the first player from Ecuador to play against The Gas.
In finishing the season in fifteenth place, Rovers completed a League double over Blackpool but had the double completed over them by champions Luton and play-off sides Sunderland and Doncaster. With an average home League attendance 8,320, Rovers’ highest home attendance was 10,009 for the visit of Sunderland; 28,971 saw Rodman give Rovers an eleventh-minute lead at the Stadium of Light, this figure dwarfing the 2,301 at Rochdale three days later when Rovers were unable to score, despite Dale’s goalkeeper Magnus Norman being dismissed before half-time. Ollie Clarke was named Players’ Player of the Year, with Craig being the side’s only ever-present and Jonson Clarke-Harris’ eleven League goals making him the club’s top scorer. Besides Craig, two Clarkes, James and Ollie, goalkeeper Bonham and club captain Lockyer all featured in at least forty League matches. Three celebrated former Rovers defenders sadly died during the campaign, Kevin Austin and Joe Davis in the autumn and in April full-back Lindsay Parsons, who had played in 167 consecutive League matches for Rovers in the early 1970s.
An embarrassing FA Cup exit at the hands of non-league Barnet was the third time Rovers have lost at home to a non-league team since the side first gained admission to the Football League in 1920. Surviving Stuart Sinclair’s seventh-minute red card to earn a 1-1 draw at The Hive, Rovers lost 2-1 at home in the replay. Former manager Paul Trollope was assistant manager of the Brighton side which reached the semi-finals. A League Cup victory over Crawley Town, whose substitute Dominic Poleon was sent off at The Mem, preceded a 3-1 defeat at Championship side Queen’s Park Rangers, for whom Polish international Paweł Wszołek scored the second goal. Cup success came in the Football League Trophy, where group stage victories over West Ham United Under-21s and Yeovil Town preceded wins against Swansea City Under-21s in front of 371 fans, Northampton Town and Port Vale. Jakubiak scored three goals in this competition for Rovers. Early season disinterest – only 873 watched the 2-0 defeat at Exeter City in November, in which sixteen-year-old Zain Walker, born in January 2002, became the first twenty-first-century-born player to represent The Gas – led to disappointment, as Sunderland won 2-0 at The Mem with Rovers within ninety minutes of a Wembley final.
Ultimately, avoiding relegation proved a successful conclusion to a disappointing season, Rovers’ third back in third-tier English football. On the evening of 3rd March, as Rovers celebrated a 4-0 victory at home to Blackpool, the largest of the campaign, the side still languished five points inside the relegation zone. However, three of the clubs in the bottom four that evening were to extricate themselves from this position, as thirteen clubs battled to survive one of the tightest relegation battles in living memory. Southend, in thirteenth place on 3rd March, only survived the drop by beating play-off-bound Sunderland on the final day, whilst Plymouth and Scunthorpe, in 15th and 16th places respectively at that stage, played each other on the final day and both were relegated. Wimbledon nine points inside the bottom four with eleven games to play, avoided relegation, with Rovers as high as fifteenth in the table after a final-day home victory over promoted Barnsley.
Ahead of the new season, manager Darrell Clarke brought in a raft of new signings, each aimed at strengthening perceived weaker areas of the squad. Midfielders Sam Matthews from Bournemouth and Ed Upson of MK Dons were due to add creativity and gravitas to the heart of the side, St Mirren’s Gavin Reilly could add goals and Tareiq Holmes-Dennis, from Premier League side Huddersfield Town, would contribute panache and a touch of class. The signing of Holmes-Dennis proved a lasting asset left behind when Clarke left, adding skill and creativity to a side bolstered from January by the signing of Jonson Clarke-Harris, who almost single-handedly rescued Rovers from the throes of relegation with his spring flurry of goals. Shrewsbury’s excellent 2017-18 campaign having not quite earned the Shropshire side promotion, Alex Rodman and Stefan Payne joined The Gas, to be joined later by Abu Ogogo, who arrived via Coventry City, whilst two early-season loan signings saw goalkeeper Jack Bonham and young striker Alex Jakubiak arrive from Brentford and Watford respectively.
On the other hand, the old guard was beginning to leave. Full-back Lee Brown, whose goal against Dagenham had earned final-day promotion in 2016, left for Portsmouth, for whom he scored in a penalty shoot-out in the Football League Trophy Final, the second time he had scored in a Wembley shoot-out. Top goal-scorer Ellis Harrison was sold to Ipswich Town, with whom he experienced the disappointment of relegation, and Rory Gaffney joined aspiring non-league side Salford City. Clarke himself was to follow these players out of the club in December, after the campaign had begun to follow a different path from that which had been anticipated. As the season drew to a close, rumours were rife that both club captain Tom Lockyer and longest-serving player Chris Lines were due to leave.
Indeed, the season had begun poorly. Despite the excitement of a 2-0 victory at FC Eindhoven on the club’s Netherlands tour, Ollie Clarke scoring ten minutes before half-time and Kyle Bennett adding a second two minutes from time, the pre-season matches offered a hint of troubled times ahead. Most evidently, as Rovers stumbled to a 4-0 home defeat at the hands of League Two side Exeter City, former player Hiram Boateng scoring the third goal, it was clear that goals were at a premium and that defensive frailties could prove a liability. As it was, Matt Godden scored for Peterborough United in the opening minute of the first League game; Rovers lost four of their opening five League fixtures.
What slowly evolved over the campaign was one of the tightest relegation battles in recent memory, as thirteen clubs were still in very real danger of relegation deep into April. Rovers’ first home win of a troubling campaign came towards the end of October, the 2-0 victory coming against a Wimbledon side which had looked dead and buried by Christmas before enjoying a remarkable revival. Rovers dropped in and out of the bottom four, stooping as low as twenty-third on occasions. Amidst the enthusiasm which greeted Rovers’ largest victory, a 4-0 thrashing of Blackpool in March, was the realisation that the club was still five points inside the relegation zone, albeit with a game in hand. Rovers’ League goals tally of 47 was the second worst in 2018-19 in the division, yet the defensive partnership of Craig and Lockyer, aided by the reliable Bonham in goal, ensured that only fifty goals were conceded in the League, a figure bettered by only three clubs.
Conceding late goals was part of the issue. Accrington Stanley, Portsmouth, Walsall and Burton Albion all scored very late winning goals, whilst Peterborough equalised in the final seconds of the 2-2 draw at The Mem in January. However, as Rovers’ form improved through the season, the late goals began to swing in the club’s favour: Gavin Reilly glanced home a very late equaliser in the draw at Plymouth in March; after Ched Evans had been sent off at The Mem, James Clarke’s goal four minutes into stoppage time earned a dramatic 2-1 victory at home to Fleetwood Town; and Alex Rodman struck Rovers’ final day winner against Barnsley deep into time added on. Rovers’ goals appeared to come in bursts: the side was 2-0 up in twenty minutes at Wycombe in August, full-back James Clarke and central defender Tony Craig both scoring; the team scored three goals in sixteen first-half minutes at home to Coventry City; and captain Tom Lockyer’s third League goal of the season enabled Rovers to lead 2-0 just ten minutes into the Boxing Day match at Walsall.
On 13th December, following a run of seven losses in ten matches in all competitions, Rovers took the decision to part with Darrell Clarke, their most successful manager of recent years. The double promotion feeling distant, the manager left with the club four points inside the relegation zone. Initially replaced from within by defensive coach Graham Coughlan, a run of three victories in five matches under the caretaker manager took the side out of the relegation zone, at which point, on 6th January 2019, Irishman Coughlan, whose lengthy playing career had seen him play for Plymouth Argyle against Rovers, was appointed manager on a two-and-a-half-year contract. He brought in Coventry’s Abu Ogogo and Jonson Clarke-Harris, a midfielder and striker respectively, signings viewed initially with some scepticism but which proved master-strokes. The latter, whom Coughlan had known from his coaching days at Southend, scored nine goals in his first nine League matches in a Rovers shirt, lifting the side clear of the relegation trap-door and scoring a hat-trick in the March demolition of Blackpool. It was Clarke-Harris whose stoppage-time winner in April defeated relegated Bradford City and eased Rovers to safety, aided by Players’ Player of the Year Ollie Clarke’s late equaliser six days later at Wimbledon which took Rovers to the mythically safe fifty-point mark.
In fact, Blackpool proved the most popular side to play in 2018-19. Rovers had won 3-0 at Bloomfield Road in November, Ollie Clarke’s two second-half goals coming either side of a Craig volley. The return match at The Mem in March was the day Clarke-Harris proved he could lead Rovers’ attack, adding goals as no striker had done since Harrison’s departure; he scored after six, thirty-seven and sixty-eight minutes for his first ever hat-trick, before Liam Sercombe scored Rovers’ fourth in stoppage-time. On the other hand, Doncaster proved tough adversaries. In a division dominated by the strength of Luton and the wallowing big names of Sunderland, Pompey and Charlton, Donny were easily the most devastating opposition the club faced, scoring four times in each match. Apart from the 3-1 defeat at Charlton in November, when Karlan Grant scored the third goal in the final seconds, and a 2-0 home defeat against play-off finalists Sunderland, Rovers lost no League fixtures all season by more than a goal, except against Donny. A 4-0 thumping at The Mem was followed by a one-sided 4-1 defeat at The Keepmoat, in which James Coppinger’s two goals in the opening twelve minutes made him, at the age of thirty-eight, the second oldest opponent to score twice in a League fixture against the club.
Rovers’ club record number of home League defeats, 11 both in 1947-48 and during the relegation season of 1992-93 was equalled in the Easter Monday 1-0 home loss to fellow strugglers Rochdale. The former Rovers midfielder Matty Lund scored relegation candidates Scunthorpe’s winner at The Mem in November. In fact, Rovers lost at home to Southend United, Walsall, Scunthorpe United, Gillingham and Wycombe Wanderers, yet won away to all five. With just six home League wins all season, marginally better than the four home wins enjoyed in the 1980-81 relegation campaign at Eastville, Rovers clearly struggled on their home patch. The much-improved state of the pitch at The Memorial Stadium was reflected in Rovers’ staff being awarded the Grounds Team of the Season award for League One; and yet home performances were regarded as consistently poor. However, Rovers’ reliance on Young Player of the Year, goalkeeper Bonham is best illustrated by the fact that he kept fifteen clean sheets in League One alone, despite his side spending a great deal of the season hovering around the relegation trap door. Yet, Rovers recorded a sixth successive away victory at Oxford United, the first time the club has ever won away to any single side in six successive League visits.
One indication of Rovers’ woes was that, until late March, Chris Lines had been the only substitute to score. In fact, Lines’ goal against Pompey, came from the penalty-spot, this being the sixth time a Rovers replacement had converted a League penalty, and moments later he became the fifth Rovers substitute to be red-carded. Another player sent off was loanee Joe Martin, who was to score a stunning volley at Charlton, but who lasted just seventy minutes at Shrewsbury on his first appearance, equalling a dubious record set in 2002 by Wayne Carlisle; Rovers led at the time, but drew 1-1, Daniel Leadbitter conceding an own goal to add to own goals given away in other fixtures by Craig and James Clarke. Clarke-Harris took two penalties at Portsmouth, scoring one and missing the other; another penalty-taker was Tom Nichols, the striker’s only goal of the campaign coming from the spot after eight minutes of the fixture at home to his former club Peterborough United in January. The following month, Shrewsbury’s Dave Edwards contrived to come on as a substitute replacing another substitute, and then get sent off.
As British football continued to become more cosmopolitan, a plethora of players from a range of nationalities appeared against Rovers. Charlton’s Igor Vetekele was the second Angolan international to oppose Rovers in the League; Bryan Oviedo of Sunderland was the first Costa Rican to do so and Doncaster goalkeeper, Marko Maroši the third Slovakian; Bevis Mugabi, who played for Yeovil Town in a Football League Trophy game, was the first Ugandan international to oppose Rovers in any competition, and Swansea, in the same tournament, fielded teenager Jordi Govea, the first player from Ecuador to play against The Gas.
In finishing the season in fifteenth place, Rovers completed a League double over Blackpool but had the double completed over them by champions Luton and play-off sides Sunderland and Doncaster. With an average home League attendance 8,320, Rovers’ highest home attendance was 10,009 for the visit of Sunderland; 28,971 saw Rodman give Rovers an eleventh-minute lead at the Stadium of Light, this figure dwarfing the 2,301 at Rochdale three days later when Rovers were unable to score, despite Dale’s goalkeeper Magnus Norman being dismissed before half-time. Ollie Clarke was named Players’ Player of the Year, with Craig being the side’s only ever-present and Jonson Clarke-Harris’ eleven League goals making him the club’s top scorer. Besides Craig, two Clarkes, James and Ollie, goalkeeper Bonham and club captain Lockyer all featured in at least forty League matches. Three celebrated former Rovers defenders sadly died during the campaign, Kevin Austin and Joe Davis in the autumn and in April full-back Lindsay Parsons, who had played in 167 consecutive League matches for Rovers in the early 1970s.
An embarrassing FA Cup exit at the hands of non-league Barnet was the third time Rovers have lost at home to a non-league team since the side first gained admission to the Football League in 1920. Surviving Stuart Sinclair’s seventh-minute red card to earn a 1-1 draw at The Hive, Rovers lost 2-1 at home in the replay. Former manager Paul Trollope was assistant manager of the Brighton side which reached the semi-finals. A League Cup victory over Crawley Town, whose substitute Dominic Poleon was sent off at The Mem, preceded a 3-1 defeat at Championship side Queen’s Park Rangers, for whom Polish international Paweł Wszołek scored the second goal. Cup success came in the Football League Trophy, where group stage victories over West Ham United Under-21s and Yeovil Town preceded wins against Swansea City Under-21s in front of 371 fans, Northampton Town and Port Vale. Jakubiak scored three goals in this competition for Rovers. Early season disinterest – only 873 watched the 2-0 defeat at Exeter City in November, in which sixteen-year-old Zain Walker, born in January 2002, became the first twenty-first-century-born player to represent The Gas – led to disappointment, as Sunderland won 2-0 at The Mem with Rovers within ninety minutes of a Wembley final.
