End of an era

SO he's gone.
Our manager, Paul Trollope, has been axed from his post after five seasons at the helm.
It's a sad day, not because I feel he should have stayed but because he played such a vital role in restoring our League One status and giving us fabulous days out at the Millennium Stadium and Wembley.
But all good things come to an end and, lovely guy that Trolls is, he had been living on borrowed time.
If truth be told, he had been given far longer to get it right than other managers would have done with his recent record.
I don't think it was the fact we were losing too many games, but the manner of some of those defeats.
I can even put my finger on when it went wrong - it was after the brilliant 3-2 win at Southampton last year. Though we won the game there were still certain players who were regularly underperforming and needed to be dropped. We got away with that one because of the brilliant goalkeeping of our Danish Under 21 keeper Mikkel Andersen.
Trolls showed his loyalty and stuck by the under-performers, and the 5-1 defeat at Norwich the following weekend began a run of seven games without gaining a single point.
And since then there have been some horrendous results. Losing 5-0 at Orient last season and 3-0 at home to the same opposition this term was as bad as it got.
There were also 5-1 and 4-0 defeats at home to Southampton, a 6-2 loss at Sheffield Wednesday and a 6-1 reverse at Oxford.
In fact, that result and our FA Cup exit to non-league Darlington will have rankled with the board more than anything because of the lucrative revenue cup runs can bring.
The final straw came when we bowed out of the Paint Pot Cup on a penalty shootout to Exeter on Tuesday. We were a minute from winning that game, too, and I dare say he may have held on to the job for a few more weeks had we kept Exeter out.
But with the season effectively over by December 14 the board took what had become an inevitable decision.
Interestingly, some of the players went on Twitter to voice their disapproval. Fair enough, but if they had been putting in good performances they would be arguing from a far stronger standpoint.
The truth is on countless occasions - including last week's horrendous defeat in Sheffield which, judging by the highlights, could have been an even bigger thumping - Trolls was coming out with the same statements.
He kept talking about how the players were capable, how for some reason they didn't perform as they can, how they got a bit tired after a few weeks without any games and how they would now have to bounce back. He said he had explained to them what he wanted them to do but they hadn't carried out those instructions.
Well, if a team isn't carrying out your instructions on a regular basis then really you have to ask why not? If those players were so keen on holding on to their manager how could they capitulate in such gutless fashion on so many occasions?
I know a few managers who wouldn't have been so understanding of these "capable" players who, for some reason, didn't carry out their instructions.
Now, defenders of Trolls say that he has had his playing budget slashed and that the board haven't backed him.
I am not sure I hold with that statement.
From what I can see he was given a budget that enabled him to attract the likes of the highly rated Will Hoskins to the club, while also signing Wayne Brown from Fulham and Gary Sawyer from Plymouth. All, he said, were Championship-class players.
Unfortunately very few of the signings during his tenure came off.
Ricky Lambert, Jo Kuffour, Hoskins, yes.
Carl Regan and Jeff Hughes? The jury is still out.
But Dominic Blizzard, Darryl Duffy, Mark Wright and Andy Williams certainly didn't come close to justifying the big build-up they were given.
He was also given free rein at the start of the season, emerging from under the wing of father figure Lennie Lawrence and allowed to build his own backroom staff.
To my mind, not many managers at this level could ask for more.
Still, I would like to thank Paul Trollope for giving it a real go, adding a play-off final triumph and Paint Pot final to his CV and giving us a wonderful, rollercoaster ride which began with the joyous highs of the 2006-07 season and continued with a fabulous run to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.
Perhaps, when he looks back, he may feel that some of the players in which he invested so much faith and loyalty didn't return the favour.
It is a tough lesson to learn in the dog-eats-dog world of management but I hope he takes it on the chin and moves on to bigger and better things.
What next for Rovers?
Well, I think they must forget about the tracksuit manager and look beyond the glorified coach.
They need a proper manager, who knows about the psychology of the game, how to get the very best out of average players and who has good contacts throughout the football world while having a strategy to develop the youth side of the game.
I keep hearing about former players getting their first leg up, the Andy Tillsons and Marcus Stewarts of this world.
But the Gas are in a relegation fight (despite what PT maintained on Monday) and need someone who has already done some of the hard yards, who has made mistakes and learnt from them. Someone who is the next stage on from Trolls.
Geraint Williams and Chris Coleman are two such people that spring to mind.
Whatever happens, it's an interesting time to be a Gashead.