New BEP Rovers Blog column available now

I couldn't possibly admit to knowing the Latin names of gulls on a football forum...

With regards to the Post, I've just upgraded my phone and found it worse than ever. Even stopping the page as soon as the text loaded didn't work this time. Stupid website!

BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - Rush Goalie

Posted: January 14, 2015

By Martin Bull

One of the best, and simultaneously worst, aspects of Rovers being in the Football League was getting a cursory one minute slot every Saturday on BBC1’s ‘The Football League Show’.

The down side was that it would probably be 1am by the time the Pirates were on, and that was after being forced to listen to the dullsville middle of the road remarks of Leroy (“when I was at Torquay…”) Rosenior or the nasal whine of Steve Claridge.

Many years ago in the nascent days of the media finally cottoning onto the excitement, colour and skill of the Africa Cup of Nations, I got up early on a Sunday to watch a live match they were showing on some sort of cable channel or early red button invention.

Given that about 12 men and a dog were probably watching, the commentator was straight out of a media studies course, and the summariser was Steve Claridge, in his early days away from the smell of liniment in his day job. They encouraged the said ‘crowd’ of viewers to send questions in, so I crank started my brick shaped mobile phone and rattled off a question somewhere along the lines of, ‘Are you going to do any analysis of the game, or just describe things we can see with our own eyes?’. It miraculously got ticker-taped along the bottom of the screen, and I was honoured to be on the end of a Claridge rant and the immortal bleat of, ‘what side of the bed did he get out of this morning?’.

In June this year it finally dawned on me that our relegation had so many knock-on effects. We obviously weren’t even a ‘League’ club anymore, so we wouldn’t be on the Football League Show, wouldn’t be in the League Cup, wouldn’t be in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, and to rub it in even more, not only would any away matches I go to not count towards my long-term quest of seeing a game at all of the 92 League clubs, but that one of the 66 clubs I had visited (my own club!), could no longer even be counted on my list. T

Thankfully this myriad of negatives were all neatly balanced by being on TV more than ever before, even if it was only BT Sport, and having a newspaper dedicated to us; the Non-League Football Paper. Muh.

Not surprisingly I stopped bothering to even tune in to the Football League Show. Something however drew me back last Saturday evening, as if fate was willing me to witness the uproarious sight of ex-Rovers striker Matt Harrold donning a goalkeeping jersey for Crawley Town when regular keeper Brian Jensen was injured with over 50 minutes still to play. With no sub goalie, the ginger ninja was apparently picked to put on the absurdly over padded gloves because he is somewhat lanky, rather than due to any previous experience or feline like cameos and scorpion kicks in training.

The fact that MK Dons put two past him to salvage a draw, and that 2-2 was still considered a good result by Crawley fans and worthy of a MOTM award for ‘the cat‘, puts Mark McChrystal’s clean sheet against Wrexham a month ago into startling perspective.

Seeing a grown man hurriedly pulling on a padded jersey three sizes too big for him, then forget the gloves, whilst proceeding to try to look professional in a job he’s most probably never done before is one of the rare joys of being a football fan, but one that had been getting rarer each year since the 1993/94 season, when three subs were first allowed and goalies regularly featured on benches. Although various league and cup competitions now customarily allow five subs to be named, sometimes even seven, the pressure to make crucial creative substitutions that can flip a game on its head, coupled with the modern day absence of true utility men, has somewhat counter intuitively resulted in more Harrold / McChrystal moments of late, as five outfield players preen themselves on the sidelines, waiting to be the feted game changer. Maybe it‘s time for ‘rush goalie’ to finally be added to the rule book?

What Rovers fan of a certain age can ever forget David Mehew temporarily going in goal at Trashton on New Years Day 1987 to replace Timmy Carter for about 15 minutes whilst he recovered from the battering of shots that had reined down on him from a dominant Robins side. If it was a boxing match it would have been stopped, but Boris and Timmy kept a clean sheet between them and over 17,000 hungover souls could hardly believe their bleary eyes when a last minute sucker punch from Gary Smart won the game for the brave boys in blue.

Bob Bloomer, the classic utility man and hardly blessed with the stature of a Nigel Martyn or the presence of a Kevin Miller, also deserves a special mention for going in goal when Brian Parkin was injured in an FA Cup match against Crewe Alexandra in January 1991. Losing 2-0 at home may not sound so bad today, but as the Railwaymen were a division below and in the relegation zone at the time, it was a mini-disaster for Gerry Francis in his final year as our mercurial manager.

When Mr.Glum was sent off against Brighton two months later it was Ian ‘Jocky’ Alexander’s turn to go between the sticks. When his first touch was to save the resulting penalty from John Byrne he was bestowed with instant hero status, as if chopping down numerous City wingers wasn‘t already enough to give him a place in the Rovers ‘Hall of Fame‘. No-one now of course remembers, nor cares, that we lost 3-1.

Returning to the present day, we regularly walk the sub goalie tightrope, although Steve Mildenhall will apparently be back soon.

With a two week break, two new signings, and more rest to come due to the farcical forced postponement of our next home game for the sake of the FA Trophy, we enter into this final push with the strongest and fittest squad we’ve had all season, and a genuine chance to remind Barnet that their rivals are not just going to stand and watch them march to the title.

There is little I can really add to the recent coming and goings at the Mem. I doubt anyone could argue with Fabien Spiess, Dave Martin and Alex Wall all departing (with our best wishes) after disappointing loan spells, nor on the other hand the exciting arrival of number one target Jermaine Easter. Matt Tubbs would have been just as agreeable, and at three years younger a signing with a longer future, but Portsmouth have a tedious reputation for big spending and little success, so if he prefers to be there then he‘s not quite the right player for us.

We now have a player who was held in high regard at Millwall and it’s difficult to find a bad word said about his attitude and professionalism, which I imagine is precisely why Darrell Clarke has wanted him for several months now.

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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 just produced a new book about them, in collaboration with Rovers fans far and wide, young and old - www.awaythegas.org.uk

Read more: www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-Rush-Goalie/story-25848444-detail/story.html#ixzz3OnYTHw4i

Chaps, all you need is a Windows phone. When you load up the webpage, a little book symbol appears in the address bar. Tap it, and the Evil Post page is transformed into a wonderful, easy on the eye format. No pop ups or other annoying crap

Crikey.  Those Thai Ladyboys are flexible, aren't they?

They are, at least so I'm told.  

Just installed Adblock for Android and seems to have worked! Thanks for the tip Brizzle.

BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - It was on the Cards

Posted: January 20, 2015

By Martin Bull


Occasionally you will hear a football fan saying ‘that was the best 0-0 I’ve seen for ages’. Sadly that phrase wasn’t used by any of 1,869 Gasheads who were officially counted at Woking on Saturday (nor others who were unofficially in other parts of the ground). This game really was an old fashioned nil-nil dullfest, and both teams were lucky to even get nil. Sadly the atmosphere was also dead as a dodo, not helped by two-thirds of the Gasheads being strung out along the long, thin terrace, whilst the 600 others were away in the seats at the far end.

A point is a point, but there was a tinge of disappointment at the result after seeing Barnet lose again away from home, although that defeat was at a tough club that we ourselves will be visiting on Valentine’s Day. If we had been offered a point a month or more ago I suspect most of us would have been happy to take it, but after the Cards had a December slump our expectations had risen.

On the pitch it was a woefully turgid game and rather made a mockery of the idea that a two week break would do us good, whereas part-time Woking would undoubtedly wane after tackling two FA Trophy matches during our fallow period. It was actually Rovers who looked languid and rusty, whilst Woking looked as sharp as a fresh deck of cards. Neither team however showed the quality needed to break down the resolute defences whose proficiency cancelled each other out. It might as well have been a game between two bowling machines borrowed from the local cricket club; spitting out balls for the four excellent centre halves to deal with.

The obligatory 'guy behind me on the terrace' was spot on when he raised the question-cum-statement of “why all this ball over the top nonsense?!“. We don’t normally play that way and as the first XI hadn’t really changed since that successful festive period (just Ollie Clarke in for an injured Beard), it seemed baffling why we thought that Blissett and Taylor had overnight become the reincarnation of Roberts and Cureton from the late 1990‘s.

At least we can be delighted to see Macca back to his best, and what he lacks in pace he makes up with positioning and experience. Tom Parkes gets better every game and his confidence on the ball, his little tricks, and even his passing has improved exponentially. His solidity is now almost taken for granted and if any of the rumours are true about league teams looking to bid for him, then we need to realise that he is the one member of the defence we really cannot afford to lose as he is our lynchpin. Having turned 23 last week he also still has a decade or more in him, unlike Trotman and Macca.

There must be a defensive fetish in the Woking area as the only notable relationship we previously had with the Cardinals was paying a whopping £150,000 for impressive centre back Steve Foster in May 1997 after his solitary season for the Cards during their golden period - between 1994 and 1997.

Players who have also appeared for both sides include Scott Rendell (a noteworthy striker), Elvis Hammond (surely the only ex-Pirate with a middle name of Zark) and Jefferson Louis - but then again Mr Louis has played for 92.7% of all non-league teams in the UK (fact!). This deadly trio shared between them a staggering… nil goals in the blue and white quarters. Later, in 2012, Hammond was all shook up when sentenced to a year at Her Majesty‘s pleasure for his part in a money laundering operation, but at least he did make the jailhouse rock whilst inside. On his release he joined Farnborough and when the squad was rebranded in a sponsorship deal each player was given the name of a famous footballer to officially adopt and have on their shirt. Hammond, quite inexplicably, got ‘Pele’!

There was more drama off the pitch than on it, with several hundred Pirates locked out of the ground after the peculiar sounding away figure of 1,869 was reached. It was an invasion of the likes not seen since the aliens landed at nearby Horsell Common in H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’. Some observers bizarrely held the fans themselves and BRFC responsible. As the blame game has since unfurled it is hard to know quite who to believe, but the bottom line is that it is Woking’s ground, not ours, and Surrey Police‘s patch, not Avon & Somerset’s. For travelling away fans to be locked out of any ground that holds 6,000 yet only had 3,853 actually in it is a complete farce in anyone’s language.

The fixture was the perfect storm for us fans and they had been warned, yet failed to adequately provide for us. It was an easy car journey, yet also well served by a busy train station within a suitable walk. Woking is near enough to London and the South-East to attract our numerous fans exiled there and with no game for two weeks before or two weeks after, two new signings to hopefully get a glimpse of, and the Gas on a roll (including winning our last two away games) they really should have thought about this a bit more.

They can’t have their cake and eat it can they? Why was there an absurd over abundance of police if they hadn’t expected a huge following, and surely you can’t decide to segregate a match but then also continue the quaint non-league custom of ‘swapping ends’ at half time, as many from the Kingsfield Road Terrace (behind the goal) went to stand in the far corner for the second half, the beautifully entitled ‘Moaner’s Corner’. Anyway, why this siege mentality in the first place? We‘ve never even played each other before, and there is certainly no beef between the clubs or fans; more likely a collective ignorance of one another. Why couldn’t they just treat it as a nice little pay day, and a good sing song between friendly fans. Sadly, if this travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery had finished in ‘trouble’ it would have been splashed all over the media, whereas headlines such as 2,000+ Gasheads behave well, with several hundred inexplicably locked out, don’t sell papers do they.

Barnet’s lead on us is coming down, and their first back-to-back losses of the season may prove notable, but it’s hardly a two horse race. Whilst I don’t feel the pack behind us will all win their games in hand, when everything is equal the top five could be a very replete clique indeed.

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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 just produced a new book about them, in collaboration with Rovers fans far and wide, young and old - www.awaythegas.org.uk

Read more: www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-Cards/story-25889018-detail/story.html#ixzz3PNOzpaXq

BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - Be good to yourself, and even better to others

By Martin Bull

With yet another barren Saturday, Rovers fans embarked on a multitude of alternatives from putting up shelves to watching our old friends Bath City continue their impressive march in the F.A. Trophy.

One thing most of us probably weren’t doing though, was sitting down with a rosy red pen to write a Valentine’s card to the head cheese of J. Sainsbury plc.

It comes as no surprise that the BRFC Board of Directors have felt they need to take Sainsbury’s to the High Court as it has seemed clear for quite some time that the behemoth retailer has been having cold feet about agreeing to buy the Memorial Stadium and that their wallet really isn’t in this love affair.

If this was an episode of Eastenders I suspect the obligatory relationship blow-up scene would have been played out by now with the bling engagement ring being ripped off in a fit of pique and sinking like a stone to the bottom of the River Avon.

Usually it is us fans and Rovers who resemble a mismatched couple, aptly described after the shocking relegation in May by David Roberts in my recent book as, “a one-sided love affair, unrequited love, but only one of us seems to be committed to the relationship.”

In 1996 Sainsbury’s became one of the first retailers to sell Fairtrade products, and now claim to be the world’s biggest retailer of such produce. Yet it doesn’t seem to promote fair trade towards everyone and have recently been accused of bully boy tactics by Citigrove Securities and South Ruislip Residents’ Association for declaring that they will apply for a judicial review into the planning permission that was legally granted for a large development in West London on the site of a former dairy that had been a derelict eyesore for ten years.

The development includes a cinema, five restaurants and 132 much needed flats and houses. Oh, and an ASDA store. Andrew Rennie of Citigrove Securities was quoted as remarking that “Sainsbury’s have had permission to extend their store in South Ruislip since 2006, but have chosen not to do so”, and thus believes that the legal challenge “has no merit, but its sole purpose is to stifle and restrict competition”.

Unless you’ve been holidaying on Mars with Colin Pillinger’s Beagle 2 probe, no-one could have failed to notice that the big supermarkets are going through a torrid time, and are looking at crisis cutbacks, especially of bigger stores. This though is a crisis of their own making as they didn’t respond to the economic downturn and haughtily kept prices high when customers clamoured for alternatives that didn’t exist at the time.

Experts say that the problem is that lots of people may well shop in these big hypermarket-type retail units, but very few actively love to shop there. The strategy was a real example of the ’build it and they will come’ philosophy, but as the great Motown team Holland, Dozier & Holland wrote (what a creative midfield they would be!) “you can’t hurry love… it‘s a game of give and take“.

What is galling many, including Rovers fans, is the lack of clarity and openness as to what Sainsbury's intentions for Horfield now are.

What is worrying is that some Gasheads seem to have already given up the fight. Of course we cannot influence the legal process, but there is no reason to suggest that Sainsbury‘s have a get out of jail free card just because they have an enormous turnover and are a FTSE 100 company. A contract is a contract, and when they entered into it they were extremely happy to secure such a prime piece of real estate. Since then Rovers have bent over backwards to accommodate what are increasingly looking like disingenuous delays to the sale. Little did we know that their range of ’Be Good to Yourself’ foods was also the slogan for their own self-centred strategy to abrogate contractual responsibilities. If the contract was full of escape clauses they would surely have been long gone by now, like the expensive ring in the Avon.

Gasheads, there is no need to give up the fight yet. Yes, this is more delay. Yes, the Board will not be able to give us a blow by blow account of every legal issue that is going on. But Sainsbury’s won’t be able to win this just because they can afford a posh lawyer. A well-aimed sling shot to the forehead can bring down even the mightiest Phillistine Goliath, and if the spoils of war are only a partial fulfillment of the contract, at least we died on our feet rather than lived on our knees. Viva Zapata, Viva Higgsy. Hasta la victoria siempre!

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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 just produced a new book about them, in collaboration with Rovers fans far and wide, young and old - www.awaythegas.org.uk


Read more: www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-good-better/story-25929694-detail/story.html#ixzz3Q7uT1hgF

sorry, I do usually paste the article in but haven't had access to a decent computer for much of the day. Here it is.


BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - The Dartford Dossier

By Martin Bull

Assistant Manager Marcus Stewart was sent to face the press for the traditional Thursday briefing and said that “we’ve had them [Dartford] watched and we know what they are all about… No game is the same and you have to approach them all in different ways but the players we have here are brilliant and they all understand what is needed to get the points”.

Well clearly the players did NOT know what was needed to get the points, or they ignored the advice they were given and somehow Darrell Clarke and his helpers couldn’t drill it into them on the training pitch, before the match, or again at half-time.

I guess the dossier on Dartford, by persons unknown, went something like this... ‘This will be part-time Dartford’s eighth match in January; twice as many as our full-timers. They have lost nine of their last 10 league games (five by more than a goal) and seem to have only one likelihood of scoring if Harry Crawford fluffs a chance, Tom Bradbrook isn’t playing, and his brother Elliott gets stuck in the ground sharing sludge.

That one prospect is Ryan Hayes who is very dangerous from set pieces and has already scored direct from his curling corners twice this month. He has a strike rate of almost one in every four games, despite playing on the wing. I would suggest (a) not giving away corners if possible, (b) not giving close range direct free kicks away, and (c) not tinkering around with our goalkeeper, who has done nothing wrong.’

I have consistently supported Darrell Clarke but I am furious that we (apparently) did our homework and then ignored it. Rovers have always been considered a rather light touch and we certainly showed it on Saturday. People may not like what I am about to write but a truly successful team would have forced Hayes off the pitch (rather like Easter was) or at least reduced his effectiveness by not giving him dead ball opportunities.

I'm not condoning the former but a ruthless team would have done that if they had to. And a less irresolute goalie wouldn’t have looked to the ref for a foul, but would have claimed his territory in the first place and ushered the Darts' player out of the way if necessary. And before anyone shouts ‘penalty’ at my suggestion of a more aggressive approach, how many penalties have ever been given for a goalie assertively staking his claim in his own six-yard box at a corner? I genuinely can’t think of one.

If you think I am being overly critical then I guess you have lower standards than myself. I really don’t want to see my team in non-league and I will admit I am desparate to get automatic promotion this season. I really don’t trust the play-offs, nor a second, third or fourth season in this quagmire. Successful teams strengthen whilst they are near the top, and we haven’t done that. Four loan players have left, Ryan Brunt has gone for good, and The Beard, Ollie Clarke and Jermaine Easter are injured, whereas we’ve only had Mr Easter and two loanees come in.

Darrell was clearly very frustrated in the post-match interview and I applaud him for not blaming the pitch. But the buck stops with him. He said “you can’t coach individual mistakes” but it was him who consciously decided to put that player back on the pitch.

It is a shame the interviewer wasn’t brave enough to ask why a goalkeeper with three clean sheets in four games was ‘dropped’ for no reason whatsoever except to let a ‘big name - big wage’ keeper back in.

What sort of message does that send out to our squad? That if you are on bigger wages and have played in the Championship you get your place back? That is partly the sort of big-headed attitude that got us relegated. It really is. Will Puddy has proved himself just as good as Mildenhall and to discard him sets a bad precedent. He has only let in 5 goals in 8 games this season, and three of those were away to Barnet and Eastleigh (when down to 10 men). He played 42 times in the Conference Premier last season for an average Salisbury City team, kept 11 clean sheets and was named Player of the Season by his team-mates. Just in case the Rovers backroom staff have forgotten, that is the same league that we are now in, so he’s hardly the personification of an inexperienced understudy.

I can appreciate that Darrell may have expressed some unwise thoughts when still angry at 5pm, but I loathe to hear him saying “we deserved to win the game” and that “we are the better team“. Football is a simple game. No club ‘deserves’ to win a game when it doesn’t score more goals than the opposition. Several Darts fans said that it was their best performance of the season. If so then we just have to deal with that. We need to be 20 percent better than the opposition if they truly do “raise their game against Bristol Rovers”.

Again I will give credit to Darrell Clarke for understanding that we have dropped far too many points away from home when ahead - although it has to be said that not only did he forget the fourth example of the phenomenon (1-0 up at Forest Green Rovers, but drew 1-1) but also he didn’t articulate that he took ultimate responsibility for it. We have dropped eight points away from home from leading positions, but we are being slightly harsh on ourselves on that point as Barnet have dropped nine such points. However, what sets us apart in our respective away performances is not only their 30 points to our 24 (from one game more), but also the fact they’ve not needed to convert draws into wins often, as they are usually in front anyway! They have a whopping away game goal difference of +12 (it was +17 until two heavy defeats), whereas ours is a faint +1.

Jimmy Hill proposed the three points for a win system and it was introduced in England in 1981. It didn’t really catch on elsewhere, and certainly none of the ’big’ leagues used it until after it was adopted for the 1994 World Cup Finals. We have had 34 years to get used to it. Away draws may be fine in League Two where three teams get automatic promotion, but too many draws in the Conference can really curtail your chances of that sole, elusive solitary automatic promotion slot.

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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 just produced a new book about them, in collaboration with Rovers fans far and wide, young and old - www.awaythegas.org.uk

Read more: www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-Dartford-Dossier/story-25973973-detail/story.html#ixzz3QuKaJOeY