ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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In the film Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks' character famously tells us that "life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get." The same can also be said for Rovers, because when we take our places around the ground before a match, we never know which team we are going to get - the never-say-die battlers that turned up on Tuesday or the sorry excuse for a professional football team that didn't turn up last Saturday. And what a landmark result that was down at Yeovil. They used to be the team we all had a soft spot for when the early rounds of the FA Cup came around but after getting up to the same level as Rovers last year, we now find ourselves choking on their dust as the Glovers pass by, waving as we lie clapped out on the hard shoulder. I had been dreading this fixture for months after seeing our league positions grow further and further apart, yet I was still not prepared for the magnitude of the defeat nor indeed the general apathy shown by our players. For me, only Kevin Austin kept trying for the full 90 minutes and emerged from the carnage with any credit. Other people praised Kevin Miller but I feel he is too often rooted to the spot when a shot comes in on his goal. While Miller undoubtedly kept the score down with a couple of goal-line blocks, he wasn't completely blameless for the goals and that infamous kick at the scoreboard was extremely wayward when there was no immediate danger. Tiny crumbs of comfort that afternoon included the committed cameo from new signing Lee Thorpe and the continued application of Neil Arndale, who determinedly stuck to his task until the end, but these were mere individual highlights on a day when teamwork went out of the window. The Graham Hyde sending-off may not have turned the game seeing as we were a goal down already but it certainly finished it as a contest. Ijah Anderson had been very fortunate indeed to avoid a red card moments before, so I don't know what Hyde (our most experienced professional) was thinking when he lunged into a very late tackle before childishly pushing an opponent away. The double yellow shown by the referee was completely justified, and so our afternoon was effectively over almost as soon as it had begun. As Rovers career from one awful display to another, via a stupendously good one, it was almost inevitable that we would follow up the Huish Park horror-show with a courageous performance at home to Torquay three days later. However, you would have been forgiven for leaving the Mem as soon as you had polished off your pasty when the scoreboard read 2-0 to the visitors shortly after 8 o'clock. This time the players stuck at their task and we managed to get a goal back before half-time thanks to a tidy Paul Tait finish at the end of a route one move. This gave us hope of seeing Rovers score two in a game for the first time since mid-January and finally that elusive second came when makeshift wing-back Sonny Parker superbly headed home a beautiful cross from our other makeshift wing-back, new boy Gary Twigg, who looked very promising. With regard to the new manager, I have gone beyond caring who it is as long as he is vaguely experienced and is appointed as soon as possible so that he can stabilise our situation and the players know what is going on.
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