Heaven and Pell

Oh when will this agony stop?
I've run the full gamut of emotions over the busy Easter period, and at the end of it I am no clearer about the League One fate of my beloved Bristol Rovers.
At times it seemed we were down.
At others, the Great Escape was really on.
And in the end we are left clinging to hopes of redemption with two monumental games in the next two weeks.
At times like this we football fanatics look for omens - anything that will point us in the direction of salvation.
Is there someone up there, looking down on us and giving us a sign that everything will be all right in the end?
Some supreme, all-knowing football deity who wants us to cling on to hope, keep the faith in our heroes?
I'm normally a pretty sensible kind of bloke.
But even I fall for these last-resort measures to lift my spirits and keep me believing.
There was a perfect example of this on Wednesday night.
I had to make the long drive to Suffolk for an appointment the following day.
And speeding up the A12 I got stuck behind a lorry.
On the back of it was written the name of the company it represented. PEL. In big letters.
Two minutes later I looked to my right to see a big football ground looming up.
On the side of it was written, the Community Stadium.
Colchester's new home.
The place where our fate may well be sealed next week, provided we are still in the hunt after tomorrow's game against Sheffield Wednesday.
Well, the conclusion was obvious.
Obvious to me, anyway.
The Gods were telling me: Bristol Rovers will win at Colchester to stay up and Harry Pell, our young midfielder, will grab the winning goal.
Phew, that's a relief then.
I'm amazed that the hope is still there.
At times over the Easter weekend I thought we were down.
At others I thought we were taking a giant leap towards safety.
At the end of it all we were still in the relegation places, but none of our rivals had managed to grab a victory to make our plight Mission Impossible.
My torture began at about eight minutes past three on Saturday.
I was in work while more than 6,000 of my fellow Gasheads were at the Mem for what everyone was saying was a must-win game against Charlton.
And we had gone 1-0 down.
Things weren't looking good.
Shortly after half-time things were bleak. It was 2-0 to the Addicks and my mind was giving up the ghost, ready to accept it would be League 2 football next season.
Then came the first twist of a weekend that made a trip on the Nemesis at Alton Towers appear like a gentle cycle across the Netherlands.
Charlton had one player sent off. Then two.
We were up against nine men with 30 minutes to go.
On came our forgotten midfielder Wayne Brown, who was signed with great hope from Fulham at the start of the season and has barely managed a sniff of first-team action under any of our four managers.
And, lo and behold, he pulled one back.
Six minutes to go plus prolonged stoppages and former Bristol City player Gavin Williams equalised.
With every finger crossed, and myself willing us to get a winner, I sat out the remaining minutes.
But it didn't happen. We drew 2-2.
Plymouth having won at Dagenham the night before, and Walsall also having failed to pick up any points, we had actually GAINED on our rivals, though our goal difference is so poor we hadn't managed to rise any places in the table.
Notts County, coming back from 1-0 down to win 2-1 at Swindon, made them virtually safe. So then there were three.
Easter Monday. A visit to Bournemouth.
I couldn't make it, though my pal Haydn had made the trip by persuading his family it would be a nice weekend away on the coast.
To be fair, the weather was scorching.
But my hopes were fading.
We were starting to run out of players due to injuries.
What followed was arguably the most exhausting and ultimately deflating afternoon of all afternoons in my 40-odd years supporting the Gas.
We went 1-0 up in four minutes, and it was Brown on the scoresheet again.
Everything was looking good.
Dagenham losing, Walsall drawing.
Three points would give us a huge lift.
Then one of our centre backs, Dave McCracken, apparently attempted to decapitate an opponent in the Bournemouth penalty area, from OUR corner.
It was a straight red and suddenly my stomach sank.
This was going to be a typical Rovers sob story.
But 10 minutes later Danny Hollands, the Cherries midfielder, brought Chris Lines crashing down and received a second yellow.
Now it was ten against ten.
Then we lost our caretaker player manager and figurehead Stuart Campbell to injury.
And the second half became a full-scale assault on the Rovers goal.
But we were hanging on.
Every minute seemed like an hour, every 10 minutes a day.
It was torture.
Sixty minutes, 70 minutes.
We broke away at the other end.
A clear-cut scoring opportunity for our full back Danny Senda.
He blazed over the bar, and I was in agony.
And, inevitably, on 82 minutes Bournemouth equalised.
Three minutes later they went ahead.
Meanwhile, Walsall had taken a 1-0 lead at Oldham and we were all but down.
I can't tell you the agony I was in, the feeling of having been handed a fortune only for it to be snatched away by someone playing a sick joke on me.
I couldn't speak to the wife. Couldn't smile at the baby.
It was all over.
Rather rundown British seaside resort 2, Rather rundown Bristol football team 1
Then, in the last minute Oldham, down to 10 men, EQUALISED against Walsall.
And we lived to fight another day.
Whether my heart can take it, though, is another matter.
Over to you, Harry...

Easter rising (or falling)

IT'S that time of year when we football fans are wound up like a spring.
A huge weekend where our hopes and prayers are condensed into four days of nerve-shredding excitement.
As a sports journo I am once again handcuffed to a desk while my beloved Gas will be either pushing themselves towards League One safety or watching the last grains of hope disappear down the drain of despair.
Two massive games.
Ex-Premier League titans Charlton Athletic at the Mem on Saturday, followed by a trip to rapidly rising Bournemouth on Monday.
Every waking moment is spent going through the scenarios in your head.
Two wins, six points and we'll be within touching distance of securing our League One future.
Two defeats, and a series of results going against us elsewhere, and it's hello League Two again and all the misery that entails.
I can recall plenty of Easter weekends when I've emerged with either a huge smile on my face or with my head firmly tucked under a pillow in the hope that I will cut off the oxygen to my brain and that the nightmare will stop.
Can we do it? Can we really pull off the great escape?
Can Captain Cams lead his raggle-taggle mob of loanees, out-of-contract cast-offs and young whippersnappers to the promised land?
A couple of weeks ago, after that fantastic home win over Bournemouth, I would have said yes.
Now, two defeats later, and I must admit the doubts haven't just crept in, they have flooded my brain.
But there is good news in the camp. All the talk is that Will Hoskins, our star striker (and some would say our ONLY striker) is supposedly regaining fitness on the training ground.
He is tipped for a return to first-team action.
But if he plays, will he be fighting fit, champing at the bit again to reproduce his early season form and shoot us to a glorious finale?
Or will his optimism prove premature, his lack of match-fitness let him down or, heaven forbid, he bow out with a recurrence of his troublesome ankle problem?
We'll know fairly soon.
In the meantime we are left to hope that our west country neighbours Plymouth can do us a favour and get something from their trip to close relegation rivals Dagenham.
I imagine every Gashead will be with them in spirit, shouting "Greeeen Arrrmmmy" and "Caman you Janners!" at the tops of our voices in the hope that Peter Reid can produce one more miracle from his locker in this season of financial meltdown for his team.
They say we can't hope for others to do us a favour, but it's just human nature, isn't it?
In fact, all around us teams we were praying would slip up only weeks ago are now the teams we are begging to do us a favour.
Tomorrow, it's Swindon at home to Notts County. Swindle, the old enemy, are now a close ally in our plight.
They've won one game in 20, but we want them to buck the trend and grab three points.
And then there is Sheffield Wednesday. Tomorrow we hope they play like world beaters to take the points at Walsall.
Next Saturday we will want them to resemble a rabble of no-hopers on their visit to the Mem for our last home game of the season.
What's for sure is that every sports programme will be watched, Radio tuned in and text messages keenly devoured for news of the twists and turns to come.
In the typically masochistic manner of the football fan, I can't wait for the action to start.

Mad dog bites

SOMETHING strange happened on Saturday.
Rickie Lambert didn't score.
In fact, for 82 minutes none of the Southampton all-stars scored against us.
Unfortunately in the 83rd minute they did, leaving us marooned in the relegation zone.
Saints 1 Sinners 0
Lambert, as has been mentioned many times previously on these pages, was our lynchpin, our 20-goal a season striker who was tempted away from us by the bright lights of the South Coast two years ago.
Since then our fortunes have taken a bit of a nosedive.
And every time we had played them since then he has continued to stick the knife in, scoring at will against our hard-pressed defence.
On the face of it a 1-0 away defeat to a team currently pushing for automatic promotion with a hatful of household names isn't a bad result.
And the other teams around us all had a bad day at the office, too.
But, oh what a difference a point would have made.
Particularly when on Tuesday night one of our main rivals, Notts County, managed to take all three points at Tranmere with their game in hand.
Notts County, incidentally, span the management roulette wheel and landed on Martin 'Mad Dog' Allan, a bloke who is not known for his tolerance of failure or players not giving 100 per cent.
I hear they are still searching for some of the bodies of those players brave enough to ignore his instructions.
Having inspired deeply troubled Barnet to three wins in a row after taking over he walked out on them in the middle of the night to take over at Nottingham and could yet get County on a bit of a roll.
By contrast, our plight once again looks extremely difficult.
We have home games against big name clubs Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday, must visit Bournemouth who are pushing for a play-off spot and will be eager for revenge after we stole the points from them at the Mem a couple of weeks back, and the final game of the season away at Colchester and our ex-manager John Ward.
Suddenly all the hope of the Campbell revolution is draining away, though Gasheads are still sticking with their belief in a great escape plan.
Difficult, though, when our top striker has his horrendously injured ankle held together by sticky back plastic and we can't buy a goal for love nor money at the moment.
And I can't help feeling the turning point was that insipid home performance against Exeter. If we had just managed to take a point, and possibly three, the revival would still be going full-power ahead.
Now we are clutching at straws.
Even caretaker player manager Campbell threw the dice and gambled on Saturday by putting two 17-year-old strikers, Lamar Powell and Ellis Harrison, on our bench and bringing them both on in the second half.
By all accounts they put up a decent show, but I wouldn't be pinning my hopes on them pulling us out of the doodoo at this late stage of the season.
Still, our assistant caretaker manager Craig Hinton insists that we aim to win our last four games. That's ok then.
Mind you, I wasn't expecting him to say in his press conference that we were thinking of maybe losing one and drawing another.
And I would love to know how you win games without scoring goals.
It's all spin and sometimes I wonder why we even bother with such mundane interviews. Hardly inspiring.
The truth is we have four of the most important games in the club's history lying ahead of us.
I'm not sure we have the firepower to pull it off.
But until it is mathematically impossible, in true management-speak, I will keep the faith.

Reach for the Rene

WELL, perhaps I got just a teensy-wheensy bit carried away with my last entry.
The truth is the movement, the cause, the unrelenting force driving my beloved Bristol Rovers towards safety came to a juddering halt last Saturday.
At home to Exeter City.
A team that at one stage weren't fit to lace our boots.
A team who have spent the majority of their history fighting for scraps in the basement bin of the football league.
But a team that, under the wise guidance of manager Paul Tisdale, is now punching above their weight and leaving us floundering in their wake.
I had every hope that another three points against our west country rivals at the Mem would catapult us closer to safety.
As it was a pretty comprehensive defeat left us right back in the myre, with Tuesdays results - in particular a Walsall home win - dumping us back into the relegation places.
How long a week can be in football.
Unstoppable Force 0, Lambs to the Slaughter 2
And suddenly the faults that have been evident to everyone but, it appears, our various management teams and board of directors have come back to haunt us.
Our caretaker player-manager Stuart Campbell missed the game through injury and, more to the point, our top goalscorer and recently installed captain Will Hoskins was also out with an ankle that had swollen to balloon-sized proportions.
In the past, to ease our ailments, we might have reached for the Rene.
But our on-loan bulldozer from Peterborough, Rene Howe, was nowhere to be seen.
It meant Rovers lining up with their only fit striker Jo Kuffour and failing abysmally to put pressure on the Exeter goal.
In truth this could have happened at any time in the season. The longer it goes on the more it seems suicidal folly that we have tried to negotiate our way through 46 games with just two experienced frontmen on our books.
If we had lost Hoskins earlier we would have been down already.
I thought that by sheer Will (pardon the pun) we might have come away from the Exeter game with something.
But it wasn't to be.
That result - and our complete inability to trouble the Exeter defence - bodes badly for the rest of the season.
Meanwhile, the hunt is on to find the Howe, why's and wherefore's of the Rene situation.
Rumours abounded.
He had fallen out with Campbell, the leader of the revolution, in some kind of Animal Farm scenario. "We're all in this together, we're all equal, but some are more equal than others".
He had hot-footed it back to the wilds of Peterborough, never to be seen again.
The club insisted he was still here. He was back in training.
But the evidence appeared to the contrary.
The evidence being twitter and the assertion by our midfielder Chris Lines that "I haven't seen him".
Howe's a pretty big lump. I don't think you could miss him on the practice pitch.
So it was all a bit strange.
Then he turned up. Apparently having recovered from tonsillitis, he played 45 minutes of a reserve game against mighty Cheltenham, which we managed to lose 4-0.
Still, it's a bonus.
Because somehow everything looks so much tougher now.
And it isn't made any easier by our impending trip to Southampton tomorrow.
The Saints are on the verge of securing an automatic promotion place.
And they will be smarting after blowing their midweek chance by losing 2-0 at Rochdale.
My knees are knocking already. Because since winning 3-2 at St Mary's in October 2009 they have beaten us 3-2, 5-1 and 4-0 - and all at the Mem.
To make matters worse I am surrounded at work by Saints fans.
They claim they are worried. They've seen our latest results, our good run.
They think we're an accident waiting to happen.
What they HAVEN'T seen is our recent performances and the fact that we have had three shots on target in our last three games.
Saints preserve us...

The Bourne Supremacy

FOR the last hour I have been sitting stock still, staring into space.
Sky Sports News is on the TV, wittering on about some European Champions League quarter-final between Real Madrid and Spurs - but I've been taking little notice.
With beer in hand, and still adorned in my retro Rovers shirt, I guess I can hardly believe what has just happened.
And the only time the truth hits home is when I transfer my eyes to see the little tickertape message at the bottom of the screen.
Bristol Rovers 1 Bournemouth 0, it says.
A Jeff Hughes penalty for Rovers lifts them out of the relegation zone.
It follows that by telling me how our rivals at the bottom - Dagenham and Redbridge, Notts County, Tranmere and Plymouth - have all lost.
It even has the cheek to say Dagenham STAY in the relegation zone, when anyone who has studied the situation closely - and thousands of us Gasheads have - know that Dagenham weren't in that position until tonight.
They are there because we won.
Again.
For the fourth time in six matches under temporary player-manager Stuart Campbell.
Our shining light. Our comic-book hero. Our footballing deity.
The reason I am sitting in silence is because I have no voice left.
I've spent the previous hour and a half shouting myself hoarse for the Gas.
I've cajoled, bullied, harassed, hounded, praised and sung my Blue and White quartered heroes to a win that even the most optimistic Gashead could only dream about.
The bare stats don't really tell the story. They say that Bournemouth had about nine shots on target and eight off target.
We, on the other hand, had two on-target and one wide of the mark.
It sounds like another game - like Yeovil on Saturday - where we just got lucky.
I would be saying as much if I had only been able to monitor the game from my office computer, the TV or radio.
But in truth there is something stirring at the Mem.
Something that has been lacking for four years.
It's a movement, a passion, a crusade shared by every player in the Rovers squad and by every Gashead worldwide.
Suddenly we believe.
Yes, Bournemouth were good.
Yes, they created chances and perhaps we were lucky that they weren't a tiny bit more clinical.
But the way we played, the spirit we showed, the team camaraderie that was evident - sometimes those things alone are enough to pull you through bad times.
I wonder where it had been - not just over the last 20-odd games but over the last two years.
Perhaps we never really felt we had something to fight for.
Perhaps we just thought we were better than we were.
Whatever the reason, our current plight and reaction to it has reminded me of why I am a Bristol Rovers fan.
It is that perennial battle against the odds, the time when you feel it's us against the world, the position of underdog in a football stratosphere that is weighted heavily in favour of winners.
The atmosphere at the Mem tonight was incredible.
It was as if there were 5,500 of us lined up alongside Conrad Logan in the Rovers goal, keeping the ball out with our sheer will.
And though the stats say it was one sided, I thought we showed we wanted it more and, to be fair, had Chris Lines scored with a 30-yard free kick which had the goalkeeper rooted to the spot as it bounced off the bar, then it might have been an even more convincing win.
Things, of course, could still go wrong.
We have hard games coming up.
Others still have matches in hand.
Our captain and star striker Will Hoskins was carried away from the pitch with what appeared a serious ankle injury in the first half.
Player-manager and God Campbell limped off midway through the second half.
Two of our key players - and who knows the extent of their injury problems?
But I am not sure it matters. Because that would just present more odds for us to rail against, defy and ultimately conquer.
Conquer with players like Conrad Logan, one of the more extrovert goalkeepers in an exceedingly extrovert profession.
With Danny Coles, a heavily criticised centre back who never really looks fully fit but will sweat blood for the cause.
With James Tunnicliffe, signed on loan from Brighton and immediately cast aside by our first manager Paul Trollope before being considered so inadequate he was dropped to play with the youth team by replacement boss Dave Penney.
And with Danny Senda, a player who was having his contract ripped up by League 2 Torquay just a short while ago after struggling to recover from an injury nightmare.
They are an assortment of odd-balls, waifs and strays and cast offs.
And, like we gasheads, they are sticking two-fingers up to convention and saying that, sometimes, you don't have to be the most skillful, best physically equipped or most brilliantly coached player to achieve something remarkable.
Sometimes something just works. A weird chemistry.
There is no official Number 12 in the Rovers squad.
It is a number that, on the squad list, refers simply to Gasheads.
We are the 12th man.
At last, it seems, we have 11 players we are proud to stand alongside.

Huish, whisper if you dare

IT'S not the despair that will get you in the end, it is the hope.
Three weeks ago I had consigned myself to the misery of relegation, a return to the dark days of League 2 football, playing at venues at the arse end of Britain.
Now, with two managers sacked and a long-serving player handed the poisoned chalice in a last desperate attempt to revive our fortunes, we have somehow won three away games in a row and taken 10 points from a possible 15 in our last five games.
True, we're still in the relegation zone, but we can actually see daylight, sense a possible escape route from the hole which we had dug for ourselves.
On Saturday the Gas went to Yeovil and, by all accounts, were battered for 80 minutes.
Looking at the highlights our west country rivals must have thought there was some invisible forcefield in front of our goal, missing at least two gilt-edged chances to put the result beyond doubt.
Then, irony of ironies, Gavin Williams, who had spent enough time on loan at Huish Park to have claimed it as a second home in the census, sprang up with 14 minutes to go to net our winner.
And suddenly, the impossible becomes possible.
West Country Yokels 0, West Country hopefuls 1
The Yeovil manager Terry Skiverton admitted it was daylight robbery, and Williams himself said we should have been 4-0 down by the time he scored.
But we survived, and dreams of a Great Escape are on.
My fellow Gasheads are euphoric, but I'm keeping my emotions in check.
Because it sounds like the problems that existed before our recent good run of form still exist, and a more clinical team might have exposed our faults to the full.
Tonight, we play Bournemouth, who have been on the fringes of the play off places all season.
And I'm worried.
Though Dave Penney failed to turn things around during his pitifully short reign in charge, he did bring in some good loan signings because he identified faults in the set up.
Stuart Campbell, the Gas legend who has taken over at the helm, appears to have discarded some of these players and turned back to those who were already on our books when we first got into this mess.
I hope that the pasting we got at Yeovil, in everything bar the score, is a lesson to him that perhaps changes still need to be made.
The experienced centre back Dave McCracken is kicking his heels on the bench, and the solid midfield JP Kalala who, to my mind, was our best player during Penney's hugely disappointing reign, both need to be considered if we don't want to turn the clocks back again to the days of heavy defeats.
I am really looking forward to tonight's match and I'm sure there will be another big crowd roaring on the Gas in their bid to achieve something that will rival any cup run or promotion push we have achieved in the past.
The Mem is buzzing, but it will only take one heavy reverse to send us back into the depths of despair again and burst our optimistic bubble.

Waste of space

I thought there had been enough pain, suffering and humiliation to bare for Gasheads this season.
There have been heavy beatings, ignominious early exits from two cup competitions, a penalty kick in the unmentionables when another Wembley appearance was on the distant horizon.
There has been a revolving carousel of managers and the prospect of the yawning chasm of the Football League basement.
At times we have had to put up with being the butt of some pretty painful jokes at the hands of rival supporters.
And we are playing at a ground which is a few steps removed from a landfill site.
But just when you think you are emerging from the dark days, when the shining light that is Stuart Campbell is beginning to restore your dignity, and that you can raise your head with pride once more, what happens?
Rovers proudly name their new shirt sponsors.
McCarthy Waste Management.
According to the Gas website they 'provide environmental solutions for waste and recycling problems'.
The company, it goes on, were formed in 2001 'to fill a gap in the local market for removal of both domestic and commercial waste'.
But let's strip away all the positive spin and PR speak.
We're being sponsored by a RUBBISH COMPANY.
Still, I guess when we're singing 'What a load of rubbish' after games in future the club can say that we were just voicing our support for our generous sponsors.
I have absolutely no objection to a local firm putting money into the club, and the more the merrier considering our on-going state of sporting paupery.
But surely even the Rovers board could have seen the blatant pitfalls that might arise from our shirts being emblazoned with the name of a refuse disposal organisation.
To be fair, the sponsors were pulled out of a draw and each company that entered had to pay for the privilege so it made the club a decent wedge.
But I'm still struggling with the whole idea.
I mean, owner Kevin McCarthy says the company are thrilled because "we are all Rovers fans and wanted to support the club."
Fine. But if I was a Rovers fan and owned a waste management company the LAST thing I would do is try to get my name on their shirts.
I'd maybe make a donation, buy space on advertising hoardings around the ground and place adverts in the programme, but that would be it.
Of course, when things like this happen I can't help directing more undoubtedly ill-founded suspicions at our neighbours to the south.
After all, if I was a Bristol CITY fan with a waste management company, I could think of NOTHING BETTER than having their name soiling the shirts of our hated neighbours. What a wheeze that would be.
But, then, I've always said my loathing of the red side is totally irrational.
Still, I've thought of how we could tie in our new sponsorship with our traditional club song, "Goodnight Irene".
Maybe the chorus could finish with a chant going something like this...
"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams - Don't forget to put the bins out".