ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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I know it's Christmas but I certainly wasn't expecting Southend to be giving us any presents last week. They had already knocked us out of the LDV and despite their lowly league position, I thought we would have problems with them and winning at Roots Hall would require a bit of luck. To miss not one penalty but two in the same game is farcical and it would have been a disaster had we not won it after all that. Southend have now failed to score seven of their ten spot-kicks this season, with only Mark Gower (the first culprit last Saturday), Jay Smith and Jimmy Corbett succeeding from twelve yards so far. Three converted kicks are still more than Rovers have put away, with our two coming from Wayne Carlisle against Cheltenham and Paul Tait in the following match at home to Mansfield. It is amazing that Southend have been awarded as many as ten by the season's halfway mark. Dave Savage was penalised for the first one of the afternoon when, according to him, the player tumbled after he had got his shot in on goal. In the second half, the referee awarded penalty number two when Christian Edwards was judged to have handled the ball. As a result, out came the red card from the ref's pocket and at first many of us thought it was a straight red, which would mean a possible three-match ban. Now it appears as though it was just a second booking and Edwards will only miss the Scunthorpe game, which is a big relief as he has been the rock in our defence this season. In the end, Savage knocked in his second goal for Rovers to win the contest and it was probably due considering that he has averaged one every ten games throughout his career. It is not often that the home side are forced to wear their away kit but that was the case last week. Southend wear a navy blue strip as their first choice and unfortunately it clashes with both our blue and white home shirts and Black Arabs away kit. In our prior meeting with the Shrimpers there in the Vans, Rovers took to the field in last year's orange tops and I fully expected them to be worn again. Instead, our black and yellow jerseys were on show this time and as such the officials made Southend don their red change shirts, but I'm not sure if that had any effect on the result! They say that you can make statistics prove anything and in Rovers' case we are either on a roll with two wins in our last three games at the time of writing, or rather in the doldrums after a run of just two wins in eleven matches. At the moment I am thinking more positively and believe that we can plunder a decent haul of points in the next few fixtures. Rovers face Northampton, Kidderminster, Rochdale and whipping boys Carlisle in four of the next five outings - all of them currently kicking about in the bottom half of the table. It has been a topsy-tuvy season up to now, yet we are still within reach of the play-off pack at the midway stage. Promoted Conference clubs Doncaster and Yeovil have not changed their teams too much and find themselves very much at the top of the league and there is no-one really racing away with the championship, so I don't think we need fear anyone. We had quite a good run of results at the start of the campaign and then have just ended a bad spell of games without a win, so hopefully we can take our recent pair of victories and spring up the table a bit more.
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