Football / Features
Meet our City and Rovers football bloggers
With the start of the football season just around the corner, it is time to introduce our new writers tasked with guiding us through all the peaks and troughs of Bristol City and Rovers in their new leagues.
Their weekly Fan’s View blogs will take a measured look at the most recent games, up-coming fixtures and all the trials and tribulations off the pitch in what promises to be another emotional season.
Rovers are back where they belong, in the Football League, and will be pushing to re-establish themselves as stadium troubles rumble on in the background.
City are up into the Championship again after a stellar season and will be hoping to provide the surprise package of the league, pushing for the play-offs.
Talking up City will be season ticket-holder Dave Skinner (pictured left), from Windmill Hill. Having grown up in North Bristol, his father, a Southampton fan, took him and his brothers south to watch the football – as he couldn’t stand for them supporting a team that plays in Blue.
“My first game was a 3-0 victory at home to Port Vale in 1991 and have been in love ever since,” he said. He has recently moved seats from the Wedlock to the Williams Stand and now takes his place in the Atyeo.
Rick Johansen will be giving his opinion on Rovers from a slightly different perspective – having not entered the stadium for three years since a controversial banning order was given to former director Kevin Spencer, following a bitter split with the board.
But being a Rovers fan since about 1972 and a previous writer for the club’s programme, there will be no lack of passion in his prose.
He started supporting the club while living in predominantly red Brislington when a friend took him to the old Eastville stadium for a game. “The smell, the noise, the atmosphere. I was a Gashead in a heartbeat,” he said.
Watch out for the first Fan’s View articles set to go live next Friday.
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