Unsung Heroes of Promotion - Part 4
Jul 2, 2015 22:20:27 GMT
Bridgeman and Foran for England like this
Post by mehewmagic on Jul 2, 2015 22:20:27 GMT
This will be on the Bristol Post site soon
G is for Gas blog
-----------------------
Unsung Heroes of Promotion - Part 4
by Martin Bull
In the last few weeks I’ve been having a look at some of the (relatively) unsung heroes of our promotion season. In the absence of any completely unsung heroes playing up front I have created a little section for some of the best finishes of the promotion year.
I was disappointed for most of the season at how little game time Ellis Harrison was given, alongside some of the lazy old-fashioned stereotypes used against him, leading him to be pigeonholed as a ‘super sub‘, an equally lazy concept. Darrell Clarke didn’t make many mistakes last season, but to hand starts to players like Alex Wall, Bradley Goldberg, Jamie White and Ryan Brunt directly ahead of Harrison was one of them; 12 starts and 16 sub appearances between them, yet not one goal.
Scoring eight goals as a sub, four of which directly won the game for Rovers, sadly propelled Ellis into a bizarre Catch 22 netherworld where he was kept in a dungeon as a ’super sub’ as if not to tempt some incomprehensible witches curse. Harrison possesses a rare mix of pace, strength, enough height, and, most important, deadly finishing. He is easily the best finisher in the squad and I would trust him with a 1-on-1 with the keeper like I used to trust Jamie Cureton in his pomp. To score 17 goals from only 10 starts and 29 entrances from the bench (the later at an average of only 23 minutes per appearance), was an amazing show-case for his talents, and given a smidgen less than 1,500 minutes on the grass all season, those 17 strikes work out at a goal every 87 minutes played. That puts his season up there, statistically, with Eusébio, and Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Pelé.
Whilst Harrison’s finishes against Lincoln City (away) and Chester (home) would be in the top drawer, his sublime control and volley to grab a last minute draw at FC Halifax Town, on a rotting badger of a pitch, was off the scale, and would have easily graced a World Cup match. It is still quite amazing to look back and find that Ollie Clarke, Chris Lines, Adam Cunnington and Dave Martin all made more starts than Ellis, and Jake Gosling, Nathan Blissett and Daniel Leadbitter all made at least twice as many starts.
Goals to make Gasheads skip a heartbeat were also dished out by Jake Gosling, with two sweet strikes into the top corner, against Southport and Alfreton Town. These not only showed beautiful balance and poise, but suggested that the tired cliché of a left footed right winger cutting infield to curl in a pearler may be a predictable tactic but it’s hard to stop when executed with such precision.
If only Association Football allowed temporary specialists onto the pitch the way American Football does, as we would have Ollie Clarke down on the roster as a long range shooting expert. Although his single handed flattening of plucky AFC Telford United, both home and away, were his most important goals of a stop-start season, they were simply pedestrian compared to his blaster to level the scores against Gateshead, and my personal Goal of the Season, his clever 35 yarder at Eastleigh to catch the goalie away from his native soil and rescue a point when down to 10 men.
Of course certain followers of tiny red breasted birds will laugh at the idea of a game at Eastleigh being a great memory to evoke, but they will miss not only the fact that a quirky away day-out is the bread and butter of all true fans at all levels, but also that our season in the Conference was a penance we had to go through to begin to atone for our arrogance and mistakes in the past, just like 1982 will forever be etched in the conscience of those twitchers from BS3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.uk
G is for Gas blog
-----------------------
Unsung Heroes of Promotion - Part 4
by Martin Bull
In the last few weeks I’ve been having a look at some of the (relatively) unsung heroes of our promotion season. In the absence of any completely unsung heroes playing up front I have created a little section for some of the best finishes of the promotion year.
I was disappointed for most of the season at how little game time Ellis Harrison was given, alongside some of the lazy old-fashioned stereotypes used against him, leading him to be pigeonholed as a ‘super sub‘, an equally lazy concept. Darrell Clarke didn’t make many mistakes last season, but to hand starts to players like Alex Wall, Bradley Goldberg, Jamie White and Ryan Brunt directly ahead of Harrison was one of them; 12 starts and 16 sub appearances between them, yet not one goal.
Scoring eight goals as a sub, four of which directly won the game for Rovers, sadly propelled Ellis into a bizarre Catch 22 netherworld where he was kept in a dungeon as a ’super sub’ as if not to tempt some incomprehensible witches curse. Harrison possesses a rare mix of pace, strength, enough height, and, most important, deadly finishing. He is easily the best finisher in the squad and I would trust him with a 1-on-1 with the keeper like I used to trust Jamie Cureton in his pomp. To score 17 goals from only 10 starts and 29 entrances from the bench (the later at an average of only 23 minutes per appearance), was an amazing show-case for his talents, and given a smidgen less than 1,500 minutes on the grass all season, those 17 strikes work out at a goal every 87 minutes played. That puts his season up there, statistically, with Eusébio, and Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Pelé.
Whilst Harrison’s finishes against Lincoln City (away) and Chester (home) would be in the top drawer, his sublime control and volley to grab a last minute draw at FC Halifax Town, on a rotting badger of a pitch, was off the scale, and would have easily graced a World Cup match. It is still quite amazing to look back and find that Ollie Clarke, Chris Lines, Adam Cunnington and Dave Martin all made more starts than Ellis, and Jake Gosling, Nathan Blissett and Daniel Leadbitter all made at least twice as many starts.
Goals to make Gasheads skip a heartbeat were also dished out by Jake Gosling, with two sweet strikes into the top corner, against Southport and Alfreton Town. These not only showed beautiful balance and poise, but suggested that the tired cliché of a left footed right winger cutting infield to curl in a pearler may be a predictable tactic but it’s hard to stop when executed with such precision.
If only Association Football allowed temporary specialists onto the pitch the way American Football does, as we would have Ollie Clarke down on the roster as a long range shooting expert. Although his single handed flattening of plucky AFC Telford United, both home and away, were his most important goals of a stop-start season, they were simply pedestrian compared to his blaster to level the scores against Gateshead, and my personal Goal of the Season, his clever 35 yarder at Eastleigh to catch the goalie away from his native soil and rescue a point when down to 10 men.
Of course certain followers of tiny red breasted birds will laugh at the idea of a game at Eastleigh being a great memory to evoke, but they will miss not only the fact that a quirky away day-out is the bread and butter of all true fans at all levels, but also that our season in the Conference was a penance we had to go through to begin to atone for our arrogance and mistakes in the past, just like 1982 will forever be etched in the conscience of those twitchers from BS3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.uk