The Gas goes out

So that's it.
Finally, after 50 games spanning nine months, the Gas has finally gone out.
My beloved Bristol Rovers are down.
Relegated.
We couldn't even take it to the last game of the season.
After some pretty incredible highs, and far more bottomless lows, I now sit here wondering what to make of it all.
I remember a couple of weeks before season 2010/11 started that I was nervously excited, wondering if this might be the year the Gas forced their way to promotion and a place in the championship.
But having seen our moves in the summer there was a nagging doubt about the squad we had put together.
We had released experienced players, signed a few decent ones, but there was a large question mark over whether the squad was big enough, strong enough, experienced enough to compete with the other teams in what had become an increasingly competitive division.
The answer - after all I have seen this season - was a resounding 'no'.
Our last rites were delivered by fallen giants Sheffield Wednesday in front of more than 8,000 fans at the Mem on Saturday.
We had approached a lot of matches over the previous few months saying they were "must win games".
But this was definitely a must win game.
Lose and we were certainly down.
Draw and we might, just might, still have a chance of salvaging something in our last game at Colchester, provided our relegation rivals Walsall and Dagenham didn't win.
But at around 4.55 on Saturday, having sat looking at my computer screen with every finger crossed, willing my team to win with the hope that the powers of positive thought might bring us a last-gasp winner, the score came up on the screen.
Bristol Rovers 1, Sheffield Wednesday 1.
With Carlisle putting up barely a whimper and going down 3-0 at Dagenham, and Walsall having overcome a pretty disinterested Charlton 2-0, I knew we would be playing League 2 football next season.
We weren't MATHEMATICALLY down, but our abysmal goal difference meant we would have to go to Colchester and win something ridiculous like 17-0 to preserve out League 1 status.
And what a horrible feeling it was.
It possibly didn't affect me as badly as some of my fellow Gasheads, though. The ones who had kept the faith through the dying embers of our season, turning up to shout our players on to the very last kick, still believing that we had the ability and the nous to get us out of our sorry predicament.
They were wrong.
Back a few weeks ago I had a glimmer of hope. I thought we might have the momentum to fight our way clear of trouble.
The 1-0 home win against Bournemouth that took us out of the bottom four for the first time since November led me to believe that the Gas might put in a lung-bursting sprint to get over the finish line.
But my hope evaporated when the following weekend we put up a wretched, rudderless performance in losing 2-0 at home to our west country neighbours Exeter City.
After that, even though I listened with hope rather than expectation as we led at Bournemouth for 80 minutes on Easter Monday, I knew in my heart of hearts that the writing was on the wall.
We just weren't good enough.
Weren't strong enough.
And didn't have the tactical knowhow or the experience needed to climb clear of trouble.
Horror defeats have littered our season.
A 6-1 Carling Cup defeat to Oxford, a team a league lower than us, and a 2-1 reverse at Darlington in the FA Cup.
In the league there was a 4-0 defeat at home to Southampton and a 6-2 loss at Sheffield Wednesday and, possibly worst of all, a 6-0 thumping by Walsall, one of our rivals in the battle to escape the drop.
Those results showed me that what this team really lacked was bottle.
When the going got tough, they couldn't get going.
We used four different managers in all, but none of them could sustain a run of form to get us clear of danger.
The board's last throw of the dice, kicking out Dave Penney just 14 games after he began his reign, was to put our midfield stalwart Stuart Campbell in charge.
Call me an old cynic, but I reckon this was purely to ensure the crowd managed to reach the club's break even figure for the remaining home games.
Penney had told the press we were as good as down. The board couldn't have that and knew they needed a figure to galvanise the fan base.
Admittedly it worked for a few games. We won three vital matches away from home even though, at Yeovil, we somehow stole a match we should have lost by another cricket score.
The players all wanted to play for Stu, the man that behind the scenes they affectionately called Grandad.
But the simple truth was that the effort they put in was nothing compared to the quality of football they needed to produce to pull off the great escape.
I need to sit in a dark room for a few days and digest this. Decide the way forward. Hope that we can learn from our mistakes.
I'll wait for the Colchester game to come and go, then I'll put into words my own thoughts on where we went wrong, and how we ended up in a situation which no Gashead really expected when the first ball was kicked back in August.
I'm sure the pain will pass, eventually.