Post by mehewmagic on Oct 6, 2015 16:17:39 GMT
Here's my latest article for the Bristol Post site.
www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-play-away-week/story-27924820-detail/story.html
BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - Can we play you (away) every week?
By Martin Bull
JUST when some Gasheads were about to push the huge red PANIC button we went on one of our longest and most bizarrely timed away trip of the season (a Tuesday night for a 573 mile round trip; our 190 fans even got a warm round of applause from the monkey hangers), kept our first clean sheet for seven games, and saw a trio of front-line players actually score.
Four days later and logic flew out the window as our third longest away trip also saw a relatively comfortable win, full of goals from strikers, and the seven goals in those two matches stood in sharp juxtaposition to the same number we managed in our first nine league games. Make an equation to explain that Mr. Einstein!
Whereas football has moved on, not all fans have, and home advantage (or more likely away disadvantage) seems to mean less than it maybe used to. There’s nothing THAT unusual anymore about an disappointing home record and a decent away record, especially in the lower leagues. Teams travel in more style (often overnight for long distances), may stop for a Friday training session in a facility probably better than their own, dank intimidating grounds are few and far between, and pitches are far more uniform than they used to be; the old nugget of a ’level playing field’ has been realised more than ever before, with grassless or sloping pitches rarely seen outside of non-league, or Blackpool FC.
Whilst we thrashed Pools there were six other League Two fixtures going the way of the travelling team, whilst only three home wins were registered, all of which were by top five teams. Saturday was similar, with us being one of six teams to plunder the full three points on the road, whilst only half as many managed to win with their so-called home advantage.
Eleven games into the season may not be statistically overwhelming but 13 clubs, including us, currently have better away records than home, with only eleven preferring to be at home. These stats may just be a blip (last year only four teams had a better away record over the whole League Two season) but for the meantime it seems like there is nothing to fear away, unless you are our adversaries from last season, Barnet, who’ve lost all six league games when absent from their own Hive, plus two out of three in cup competitions.
Lower mid-table may not have been what most Gasheads aspired to a few games ago but we had played five of the top six teams, and although a solitary point against them suggested we may struggle with the better teams this season, it was surely less worrying than if we were losing to the lower and middling teams? Two victories against middling clubs later and things are looking settled again.
The five changes to the starting XI at Pools seemed to have stopped our rot and although I am usually a fan of considerable regularity in a team, I can appreciate that we haven’t been able to be settled this season because we simply haven’t been good enough and have few outstanding players. Only Lee Brown and Stuart Sinclair now remain as players who’ve played every minute for us this season.
Tuesday’s performance and result suggested that for a manager accused of ‘tinkering’ too much maybe Darrell Clarke’s constant two or three changes per ’project’ had not actually taken the ancient art of tinkering far enough. It seems like a bolder shock of the new was needed, and it was intriguing to see two ‘undroppables’ on the bench in the frozen North East; Tom Parkes and Chris Lines. Parkes’ demotion has certainly been deserved as he has clearly been the weakest link of a stuttering defence this season, and continues to miss numerous chances from set pieces.
One of the most fascinating aspects of being a football fan is seeing how long it takes for a reputation to be built and then seeing how long it takes for fans to stop repeating the cliché once it is no-longer true. This season I have read and heard numerous utterances of the old chestnut that we have ‘one of the best defences in the division’. We don’t. This adage has stuck to us like glue for several seasons now and although it was generally true in the fifth tier, it wasn’t really true in our relegation season and it hasn’t been true this season.
Pompey may be a decent team but the defending for their brace of goals was truly amateurish, and the first two at the Shrimpers were dreadful in the extreme. Apologists of our relegation season in 2013/14 pointed to the joint tenth best defence in the league, but it’s not much of an achievement when your team is back loaded and lacks the creativity and drive to offer a strong attacking intent.
The reality is that our defence is not as outstanding as some people seem to think it is, and what we have achieved at the back is often partly a result of a noticeably defensive midfield. The sooner we learn to judge our own abilities in a humble manner the quicker we can move forward, and maybe a balance is now being reached between defence and attack.
Our first unchanged team of the season speaks volumes and after stabilising the ship we now face back-to-back home games at Fortress Mem * against our loveable friends from the village of West Wycombe.
What could possibly go wrong?
* this was written before the postponement due to international call-ups [not alleged lightning strikes]
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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.uk
www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-ROVERS-BLOG-G-Gas-play-away-week/story-27924820-detail/story.html
BRISTOL ROVERS BLOG: G is for Gas - Can we play you (away) every week?
By Martin Bull
JUST when some Gasheads were about to push the huge red PANIC button we went on one of our longest and most bizarrely timed away trip of the season (a Tuesday night for a 573 mile round trip; our 190 fans even got a warm round of applause from the monkey hangers), kept our first clean sheet for seven games, and saw a trio of front-line players actually score.
Four days later and logic flew out the window as our third longest away trip also saw a relatively comfortable win, full of goals from strikers, and the seven goals in those two matches stood in sharp juxtaposition to the same number we managed in our first nine league games. Make an equation to explain that Mr. Einstein!
Whereas football has moved on, not all fans have, and home advantage (or more likely away disadvantage) seems to mean less than it maybe used to. There’s nothing THAT unusual anymore about an disappointing home record and a decent away record, especially in the lower leagues. Teams travel in more style (often overnight for long distances), may stop for a Friday training session in a facility probably better than their own, dank intimidating grounds are few and far between, and pitches are far more uniform than they used to be; the old nugget of a ’level playing field’ has been realised more than ever before, with grassless or sloping pitches rarely seen outside of non-league, or Blackpool FC.
Whilst we thrashed Pools there were six other League Two fixtures going the way of the travelling team, whilst only three home wins were registered, all of which were by top five teams. Saturday was similar, with us being one of six teams to plunder the full three points on the road, whilst only half as many managed to win with their so-called home advantage.
Eleven games into the season may not be statistically overwhelming but 13 clubs, including us, currently have better away records than home, with only eleven preferring to be at home. These stats may just be a blip (last year only four teams had a better away record over the whole League Two season) but for the meantime it seems like there is nothing to fear away, unless you are our adversaries from last season, Barnet, who’ve lost all six league games when absent from their own Hive, plus two out of three in cup competitions.
Lower mid-table may not have been what most Gasheads aspired to a few games ago but we had played five of the top six teams, and although a solitary point against them suggested we may struggle with the better teams this season, it was surely less worrying than if we were losing to the lower and middling teams? Two victories against middling clubs later and things are looking settled again.
The five changes to the starting XI at Pools seemed to have stopped our rot and although I am usually a fan of considerable regularity in a team, I can appreciate that we haven’t been able to be settled this season because we simply haven’t been good enough and have few outstanding players. Only Lee Brown and Stuart Sinclair now remain as players who’ve played every minute for us this season.
Tuesday’s performance and result suggested that for a manager accused of ‘tinkering’ too much maybe Darrell Clarke’s constant two or three changes per ’project’ had not actually taken the ancient art of tinkering far enough. It seems like a bolder shock of the new was needed, and it was intriguing to see two ‘undroppables’ on the bench in the frozen North East; Tom Parkes and Chris Lines. Parkes’ demotion has certainly been deserved as he has clearly been the weakest link of a stuttering defence this season, and continues to miss numerous chances from set pieces.
One of the most fascinating aspects of being a football fan is seeing how long it takes for a reputation to be built and then seeing how long it takes for fans to stop repeating the cliché once it is no-longer true. This season I have read and heard numerous utterances of the old chestnut that we have ‘one of the best defences in the division’. We don’t. This adage has stuck to us like glue for several seasons now and although it was generally true in the fifth tier, it wasn’t really true in our relegation season and it hasn’t been true this season.
Pompey may be a decent team but the defending for their brace of goals was truly amateurish, and the first two at the Shrimpers were dreadful in the extreme. Apologists of our relegation season in 2013/14 pointed to the joint tenth best defence in the league, but it’s not much of an achievement when your team is back loaded and lacks the creativity and drive to offer a strong attacking intent.
The reality is that our defence is not as outstanding as some people seem to think it is, and what we have achieved at the back is often partly a result of a noticeably defensive midfield. The sooner we learn to judge our own abilities in a humble manner the quicker we can move forward, and maybe a balance is now being reached between defence and attack.
Our first unchanged team of the season speaks volumes and after stabilising the ship we now face back-to-back home games at Fortress Mem * against our loveable friends from the village of West Wycombe.
What could possibly go wrong?
* this was written before the postponement due to international call-ups [not alleged lightning strikes]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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