ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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Christmas time, very much like Easter, is one of those special stages in the course of the football season that tends to set you in a certain direction for the run-in. With a cluster of matches packed into such a short period, managers and coaches simply don't have enough time to make sweeping changes between games and clubs can often do very well and win a few on the bounce or conversely have a nightmare and fall to a series of defeats. While our fantastic form over Easter saved our skins last season, the run-up to last year's Christmas holiday nearly proved our undoing as we went into the Boxing Day fixture at Swansea on the back of eight demoralising defeats - our worst run in over forty years. There must have been something in the stuffing though, as Rovers pulled off an unexpected 1-0 win at the Vetch and we lost only two of the next thirteen after that. Thankfully this season we haven't lost quite so many games and as a result we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of the league, rather than stuck in the relegation places as we were this time last year. Rovers' form so far has been wildly inconsistent, with horror shows against Doncaster and Cambridge interspersed with wonderful performances at Darlington and when coming from behind to turn over high-riding Hull the other week. Frustrating though it may be, we are nevertheless in a much healthier position than at any stage during 2002-03. People may look down and say we are only eight points above the relegation zone (at the time of writing) but we are similarly eight points away from the play-off places and personally I've had enough of looking over my shoulder. It is the timeless debate of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, and although we have got into the habit of worrying about the drop over the past few years, we should look upwards for once. It is infuriating when you see other clubs sort themselves out in the space of a few months, like Swansea, while we are turning around about as swiftly as an oil tanker and taking years to get back to the top of a league table. Love him or loathe him, the facts show that Ray Graydon is slowly turning this ship around and Rovers are getting slightly better (statistically that is) as time goes by, although the speed of our recovery from near-oblivion is almost sloth-like. Another team that will probably require a long time to get back to their level is the Iraq national side, who could be invited to play Rovers in a friendly match soon. When I was younger, I remember Iraq playing in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico but since then the political situation has not helped the football side of things and so it was nice to hear that the FA had asked the Iraqi squad to come over to Britain and train here for a spell. Seeing as it was Rovers who signed the first ever Iraqi player in English football, Youra Eshaya, who was on our books in 1954, it would be an ideal chance to mark this 50-year anniversary by challenging the national team to a game while they are in the country. With Rovers out of all the cup competitions already, we have certainly got plenty of time on our hands as last weekend's blank Saturday proved. It was weird listening to everyone else get stuck into a fixture and by going out so early in each of the three knock-out trophies, we have also missed out on earning a few quid. In recent years we have hosted both Everton and Sunderland at the Mem in front of full houses and gone to places like Derby, and even when we met Leyton Orient in the FA Cup 4th Round in 1999 we pulled in nearly 10,000 spectators, which I'm sure was a nice little earner for the club.
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