If Rovers get into the play-offs by a point, or even win the league by that little digit, we might wish to send a Methuselah of champagne to Torquay United’s foolish centre back Angus MacDonald.
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I have admittedly missed three home games, but the Gulls (or should that be the Turkeys?) were the best team I’ve seen at the Mem this season, until they allowed us to grab a barely deserved point courtesy of a few moments of madness.
Torquay are of course a bit of a bogey team for us at the Mem, and were the perfect banana skin after a heavy night out. We may not have lost at Plainmoor since 2003 (a run of six matches) but most Gasheads will painfully recall the 2-1 loss last season in a crucial April game, with the Gulls 11 points below us in the table, on a run of four straight losses, and having returned pointless from 14 of their 20 away games.
It was only our fifth home loss of the season but that was the match that really got fans worrying. Shaquile Coulthirst's opener was their club's first goal in 420 minutes of football, and a certain Lee Mansell bagged the crucial second.
And how can we forget Paul Buckle’s first home game in charge, in August 2011, a quirk of timing that proved we had somehow upset the fixture Gods. Buckle had left the Gulls with indecent haste a mere two days after his side lost in the play-off final, so a packed away end displaying a huge homemade banner reading ‘Judas‘ came as no complete surprise, amidst mutterings that his sizeable head had already been turned before that final.
Buckle had also returned to raid his former employers of Scott Bevan and top scorer Chris Zebroski, although he probably should have actually brought Euan O’Kane and Lee Mansell with him instead. The ranks of Gasheads in the bumper 8,427 crowd had patently forgot what happened after our previous relegation to League Two in 2001, and we were two down within 15 sun-baked minutes. After this unsurprising demise Buckle made the first of several interview gaffes when telling Radio Bristol: "We didn't see that coming.”
Returning to the present day, the seasiders possessed a rare combination of height, power AND pace up front, in Ryan Bowman and Duane Ofori-Acheampong, plus a decent understanding of each other to boot. Winger Jordan Chapell also impressed, and overall they were a team that both physically and mentally belied the dominant away defeat we had inflicted on them barely six days previously.
Yet in the 71st minute MacDonald managed to acquire himself only the second booking of the contest from a referee who, like most others in the Conference, usually has cobwebs in his top pocket. Only 11 minutes later the referee’s assistant seemed to spot some relatively minor obstruction in the penalty area by MacDonald on Ellis Harrison and after a brief talk to the referee a penalty was awarded, to much hilarity from the Blackthorn Terrace.
The Gulls obviously swooped on the officials like a chip-stealing flock of Larus argentatus and the way that Ofori-Acheampong got up-close and personal with them gave the ref little option but to book the big fella.
Maybe it was a deliberate smokescreen to take the heat off of MacDonald? If so, MacDonald wasn’t cool enough to grasp the lifeline he was offered, inexplicably remaining in the danger zone until the ref pulled out a second yellow to give him his fourth red card of his fledgling career, to finally silence his loose tongue.
Interestingly it still doesn’t seem clear what the penalty and booking were actually given for though, as the referee’s assistant patently made a little nodded head gesture, which suggested he also informed the ref of a modest tête-à-tête that MacDonald and Harrison shared after the foul in question.
As MacDonald trudged off he even gave Harrison another bite and a terrifying lingering pointy finger, as if he still didn’t comprehend that he had given us a point on a plate, plus a decent chance of pressing a 10 man team for a winner.
Maybe their lack of discipline should come as no surprise given the example they are offered by their boss Chris Hargreaves, a serial whinger who labelled the decision ‘disgraceful’, and earlier in the season claimed that in another year none of Ofori-Acheampong’s five yellow cards collected before the end of September would have been awarded.
He is currently on nine yellows, the same as MacDonald and 21-year-old captain Luke Young. I One assumes that for the rest of the season Hargreaves will be wearing a ‘Why always us?’ T-shirt, hand scrawled in crayon as if made by a Broadmoor patient.
As Jimmy Greaves used to say on ‘Saint and Greavsie‘, “football is a funny old game”. It seems hard to explain how we can give the third-placed team (Macclesfield Town) a total thrashing and get rather excited at reducing the gap on Barnet to seven points, and then four days later see nothing go right, with misplaced passes, scuffed shots and possession rapidly turned over as if the ball was in fact a large baked potato. We made it look like we were playing the Eagles, the Canaries or the Throstles, rather than the humble dive-bombing, faecal-fixated Gulls.
That well-taken penalty kept Barnet’s lead down to a mere nine points, which sounds so much better than a psychologically damaging double digit figure, and our doggedness was rewarded on Sunday when a perfect set of results cut it to an appetising six points.
With a fortnight for rest and rumination, I know which set of players I would prefer to be within right now. The atmosphere in our camp must be electric, whereas for Barnet it has always been their Championship to lose.
Although they are clearly a very good team, they have never gone more than six games without a defeat, whereas we have had a run of nine undefeated, and are currently in a run of 13. Both of us have tough away games next, but we are very fortunate to be facing a previously excellent Woking side now in freefall, having gained just two points from their last six games.
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 just produced a new book about them, in collaboration with Rovers fans far and wide, young and old - www.awaythegas.org.uk