The Gas are going down

Bristol Rovers got relegated today.  How can this be?

I fell out of love with the club back in 2006 when all manner of things happened.  The one that pained me most was when the Evening Post sent a junior report to tell me that I was to be removed from a weekly football column I shared with a close friend.  He intimated that pressure had been exerted by the club but would not be more specific than that.  It took me years to find out the real story, which even now I cannot relate because of the fear of those who are litigious in nature.

The upshot is that for as long as I can remember, the club has been in a mess.  Not just on the pitch but off it.  I felt that Bristol Rovers, with its sizeable fan base, should be in a much better place than it was.  And I felt that, with the right amount of will, it could be achieved.  

Move forward to today and Bristol Rovers now find themselves in the Conference.  How can this have happened?

I have, for some time, argued that the club needs to have a long term plan, that it must stop spending money it doesn't have, that supporters should have a greater running in the way the club is run.

On the first point, it could be that the club really does have a long term plan.  The problem could be that they have not been entirely successful in telling supporters what this plan is.  All we see is a football club that bumbles along from one crisis to another.  There was always a fear that one day the club's luck might run it.  Today it did.

The second point it trickier.  A senior official once told me it was impossible to run the club on a break even or better basis and that it would always, in effect, need to be propped up by directors.  And there is merit in this.  Supporters want success and are not generally bothered what it costs, as long as someone pays for it.  This is all very well but sometime you reach a stage when the debts overwhelm you and the wolf comes to the door.  You would not run your home or your own business on this basis so why run your football club like it?

Finally, supporter representation.  We have tried a variety of ways of involving supporters in the running of the club.  Sadly, we have ended up with a situation where two men with no previous history of involvement at the club have found themselves on the board courtesy of supporters donating a million quid to the club and have not the faintest idea how to represent them at all. Or maybe I should say they don't have the faintest interest in representing supporters?  Yes, I should.

There were grown men crying on Radio Bristol tonight and even the manager sounded like he was in tears.  But when the chairman was interviewed he kept saying, over and over again, that you need to take the emotion out of making decisions.  Really?

Take emotion out of football and what do you have left?  Emotion alone should not lead to poor decisions, it could if used correctly enhance them.

The chairman has already said, within an hour of relegation, that next season the club would have the top playing budget in the division and that Darrell Clarke would still be the manager. Does that mean the board was already planning for life outside the football league or did he make his comment based on emotion?  Can't have it all ways.

I know what I'd do at the club but I've given up trying to tell people.  It could be that my ideas, and those of others will far more knowledge and ability than I, won't work but they have to be better than what we have at the moment, don't they?

It shouldn't be my way or the highway at the Rovers but that's been the effective, or rather ineffective, mantra from the last 20 years and I don't see it changing.

It's very, very sad but if people really do want something different and something better, then writing a few things on a minor internet message board will not be enough.

None of us who were there before and failed to persuade people of our ideas will be trying again.

So if you want to change things at Rovers, good luck.   I won't be with you in your efforts, not even in spirit because I think you will be wasting your time and you will end up as cynical, disillusioned and defeated as I am.