ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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It is as predictable as night following day but still it hurts. Rovers followed up their vibrant performance against Huddersfield by caving in up at Cambridge and many supporters now expect this to happen. Uplifting moments are almost inevitably followed by downers and whoever coined the phrase 'false dawn' must have been thinking of us. I was unable to go to the Abbey Stadium on Saturday but I caught the goals on Nationwide Extra and found myself groaning at the defensive errors, especially for the third. Danny Boxall's pass was too short for Christian Edwards, who then fell on his backside before Adam Barrett followed suit and then Kevin Miller fumbled the ball for an easy tap-in, to cement only their third home win of the season. By that stage, our back line and Miller had been easily beaten twice already in the game and I found it strange that the goalkeeper had been recalled to the team despite the fact he was still suffering from the breathing problems that had forced him to miss the Huddersfield clash. Ryan Clarke did a good job in that match without having an awful lot to do and made a decent block at the end to keep us level. After sitting on the bench for dozens of games while injured and plainly off-form keepers have flapped about between the posts, Clarke must be wondering what needs to happen for him to get a long-awaited run in the team. Miller's positioning was criticised by Phil Bater after the game and if players are not fit or playing well then they should not be in the team. Otherwise, senior players get the message that sub-standard performances are enough to keep them in the starting eleven. Everyone at the club wants to be winning but evidently our play-off hopes have now gone up in smoke, barring a miracle. Therefore, this could be a good time to blood some of our younger players, while we are still at arm's length from the intense pressure of a relegation scrap. This season we have only played one local lad in the team, Lewis Haldane, while Simon Bryant was only added to the line-up once Ray Graydon had departed. Is it purely coincidence that the last three mildly successful Rovers teams during the 1990s had a greater representation of local players? The championship winning team of 1990 contained regulars Steve Yates, Ian Holloway and Phil Purnell, while Gary Penrice started the season before his big move to Watford and we also had naturalised Bristolians like Geoff Twentyman and captain Vaughan Jones. John Ward's 1995 team that reached the play-off final saw Marcus Stewart, Lee Archer, Marcus Browning, Andy Gurney and Weston-born Gareth Taylor as regulars and even the play-off semi-finalists of 1998 featured Holloway, Penrice, Jamie Cureton and Tom White as starters, with a subs' bench that was almost entirely Bristolian with the likes of Low, Hayfield, Zabek and Basford. Over the river, Bristol City's current success has been built largely on local talent, with a sprinkling of experienced professionals to fuse it all together. In the eyes of many Gasheads, there seem to be too many 'rovers' and not enough 'Bristol' in our team at the moment. I'm sure that a side with more local lads like Clarke, Bryant and Haldane could do a lot better and gain much more patience from the supporters.
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