WHILE the rest of the office is engrossed in a close encounter of the rugby kind, I am sitting quietly at my desk.
I've got fingers crossed, legs crossed and toes crossed.
And it has nothing to do with the action being enacted out on the playing fields of Twickers.
Half the office is rooting for England, the other half for Wales. They aren't all Welsh, some of them claim to be Irish while never having moved more than 300 yards from north London in their entire lives. Plastic paddies, if you like.
To them, a defeat for England - whoever manages to inflict it - amounts to a victory for the entire Celtic Brotherhood.
Me? I'm staring intently at the small computer screen in front of me, watching the final football scores coming through.
And I'm only really interested in one result.
It is an indictment of our season that I am actually hoping the Gas can hold on to a 0-0 draw at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, which is currently the home of Rotherham.
At least it would mean that our recent resurgence under new boss Mark McGhee hasn't petered out following defeat at Shrewsbury and a 0-0 home draw with Oxford.
Then in one brief instance my whole weekend has been transformed.
A message flashes up on the bottom of the screen.
Rotherham 0 Bristol Rovers 1 (Dorman 90).
And I feel like running around the office, ripping off my shirt and waving it above my head.
I know it's not a cup final - just a run-of-the-mill middle table contest in the depths of League 2. But McGhee has pulled another rabbit out of the hat, and suddenly all those fears of relegation that haunted me just a few weeks ago have been banished for the season.
Ah, Andy Dorman.
He's been on loan with us from Crystal Palace, a proud holder of three Welsh caps and a bloke who, by all accounts, had a decent scoring record when North of the border at St Mirren.
He's been with us since the end of last year, and hadn't scored once until now.
You beauty!
There's even better to come. Our former boss Ian "Olly" Holloway - a Gashead legend -has just managed to mastermind a 3-1 victory for his team Blackpool over our neighbours from the south of Bristol. The last time I had looked at the Trashton scoreline it had been 1-0 to City.
Happy Days, they don't come much better.
It's all getting pretty serious in the rugby, but I am walking around with a huge smile on my face. The Six Nations? Who cares. The Carling Cup final? What of it. The race for the Premier League title? Oh, is that still going on?
To my mind, McGhee hasn't just revived our fortunes, he has sent our expectations into orbit.
Of course, that has happened many times before, but there is something about this manager that oozes authority.
I like, for example, the way he has smashed away some of those favourite football cliches.
You never change a winning side. McGhee tends to do it every week and still gets results. He plays horses for courses, switches clientele and formations, and holds his hands up if things go wrong.
Some players are undroppable. McGhee has been inclined to leave out our two top scorers - Matt Harrold and Scott McGleish - on occasion to keep everyone on their toes. He realises it is a squad game and that with nine games coming up in March he will need all his players fit and firing for the challenge ahead.
Equally, how many managers would see a young talent like Elliot Richards start to make an impact and weigh in with a few goals, only to relegate him to the bench shortly afterwards? That's what McGhee's done because he realises how much performing in the mud and thunder environment of League 2 can physically take it out on a player still finding his feet at this level.
We need to rip up the current team. Everyone was talking about getting in a new manager before the transfer window closed because the squad wasn't strong enough. But, apart from the loan signings of midfielder Matthew Lund from Stoke and centre back Tom Parkes from Leicester(a neccesity when the impressive Aaron Downes received a serious injury) plus the acquisition of fullback Jim Patterson, he has said he is satisfied with what he has got. Not only that he has actually let some players out on loan.
It's a huge change from our last few managers. Paul Trollope picked his team regardless of players' form, trying to stick with the ones he considered his first choices. Short of a catastrophic injury crisis, those on the sidelines knew they would be out in the cold for long periods.
Dave Penney came in and spotted so many glaring problems he tried to change everything at once, and brought in players in the hope they would be able to stem the slide down the league.
He also tried to encourage a whole new playing system on those who had been used to performing in a completely different way, causing resentment among some of our more experienced stars.
And as for Paul Buckle, the players just didn't seem to know where they stood with him. One week they were in favour, the next they were dumped out of the team.
One minute they were playing in their preferred position, next they were switched to do an unfamiliar role for the team. No wonder results suffered when players didn't seem to know where they stood from week to week.
McGhee realises a team must be more than the sum of its parts; That each individual must be completely sure of the job he is there to do; that nothing should be left to chance.
He isn't governed by fear - a fear that changing things might backfire - because he believes in his own abilities and that belief rubs off on the players.
Yes, it's early days I grant you, but the more I see of Mark McGhee, the more I believe we may have stumbled on the right manager at last.
