Rock bottom

THIS season has been like a rollercoaster for a gashead.
Unfortunately there have been a lot more long dips than extended highs.
It began with optimism, tinged with a nagging feeling of pessimism, then depression, then a modicum of confidence brought by a couple of scrappy home wins, then elation (the 1-0 win at Huddersfield with the last kick of the game), then worry, then a little bit of anticipation (Trollope's departure, Penney's appointment and some loan signings), followed closely by utter despair.
And finally we end up here. Grudging acceptance.
My beloved Rovers are bottom of the pile.
They have been conceding goals as often as a Kate Price marriage rumour hits the front page of the tabloids.
Goal difference reads more like the weather forecast for Siberia (-29 and rising).
And every morning I wake up it's like I've got the worst of hangovers, but without the alcohol-inducing buzz that preceded it.
This is Bristol Rovers, my team, my club, the Gas. Bottom of the s*dding league as we watch the mighty powerhouses of Rochdale, Orient, Tranmere, Brentford and Exeter putting more and more distance between them and us.
What on earth has happened?
Well, there's more than one reason for our dramatic fall from middle-of-the-road mediocrity.
In truth, you can trace it back to the moment Southampton came in and offered us a small fortune for our powerhouse centre forward Ricky Lambert.
Money in the coffers, but where was his replacement?
We tried to muddle through, bringing in all sorts of temporary fixes with various degrees of success.
There was Chris Dickson, who started with a bang then petered out like a British sprinter in an Olympic final, Paul Heffernan, who was like manna from heaven till the gods of Doncaster decided to call him back to their fold, John Akinde, who had the aerial ability and presence of Bambi on ice, and finally Rene How, a bulldozer out of control.
Then there was the Trollope-inspired decision to get rid of the more experienced members of our squad and look for relatively young players who had the "desire" to rebuild their careers with us, somehow forgetting that their inconsistent pasts might come back to haunt them if things went wrong.
He also produced the now-ill conceived mantra that we would go for "quality over quantity", failing to realise that when the bad weather hit and the fixtures piled up we would struggle to put 11 players on the pitch.
Picking players of the "right age" is fine if things are going well, but when results take a turn for the worse how many of these players have experienced the bad times and come out the other side?
How many of them know what to do when the going gets really tough?
To be fair to Dave Penney, he has tried to address that by bringing in some more travel-worn pros, but when the rot has set in and the team are playing two games a week injuries and suspensions are bound to take their toll.
Still, older members of the Gas clan can, I'm sure, remember similar low points in our history.
At one stage we were pretty close to dropping out of the Football League altogether, as I recall.
But I look back even further.
I remember during my youth, when Terry Cooper was the man at the helm, that we were propping up Division Two (the Championship as it is now) and I was still going to every game with very little expectation or hope.
I turned up with three mates to get the coach to Burnley, only to find that the coach had been cancelled due to lack of interest.
Rather than turn for home, another lost soul suggested that we climb into his Ford Cortina and drive to Turf Moor.
The Gas away support that day amounted to six of us. We had very little chance of a result, survival was no longer an option, and all we could do was show our support in the best way we could.
All match we sang our hearts out and, to be fair, after trying to lynch us midway through the second half, the home contingent actually developed some respect for us on the basis that they realised our plight and acknowledged our unswerving loyalty to a lost cause.
A group of them walked us back to the car to protect us from Burnley nutcases intent on doing us harm.
And waved us off on the long journey home.
Just outside Cheltenham the Cortina gave up the ghost.
The prop shaft went and we were towed off to a garage in deepest Gloucestershire.
We then had to share a couple of taxis back, costing us £7 each which, in those days, was a pretty penny and more than we had paid for petrol or our entry fee at the game.
Arriving back at 1am in the morning a bedraggled crew, our only consolation was we had proved our loyalty to the cause. And, against the odds, the Gas had managed a draw.
At times, things seem like they can't get worse.
But all you can do as a supporter is give your support, keep your chin up, rely on the famous Gas gallows "sense of humour" and hope that however much your hurting at the time, things will some day feel better.
The good times may seem an age away - the Millennium Stadium, Wembley, the quarter-finals of the FA Cup - but the game is all about ups and downs.
And I'll go on hoping that in this strange world of lower league football, the Gas will rise again.
Bournemouth tonight.
Second in the league.
What better time to start turning the tide.
I really hope, come tomorrow morning, I don't have that awful hangover again.