Calling all stripes

Unless you've had your head up the barrel of a shotgun the last few days you will have heard that we are playing away at Bristol Rovers on either Friday 12th or Sunday 14th November.

We can only speculate as to how many Gasheads will turn up, but I suspect we will playing in front of the biggest crowd since Luton in the conference days. Games like this don't come around too often as you know so we need to take a decent following and back the lads vocally BIG TIME. We need to amass as many stripes as possible so bring along as many chaffers and wisemen as you possibly can. Let's crank up the volume and remind them gasheads there's another club down the road besides the redsh*te.

Gonna be a cracking day.

I'll be there. Friday not easy for me and Sunday better but I will be there. We can get a result I think!

I'll be there. I will try and get the old voice back in tune at St Albans on Saturday

Probably needs plenty of lubrication, served by a blond girl with a tail!

Booked for a weekend at the in-laws!!! Will have to come up with a cunning plan...

EDIT: when is the last time we played Rovers in a competitive match? can use this fact as part of persuasive effort...

20 years ago, we lost 5-0 in the FA Cup.

Perhaps the biggest anti climax I can remember. Grantley Dicks ensured Rovers were fully focused with his one man hatchet job and once we were down to 10 men, they wiped the floor with us.

Yep, 6751 crowd, Rovers had a decent team then, Marcus Stewart had a field day.

I'll be there. Want it to be on Sunday so son can come too. Hope it's not Friday as there'll be loads of people having to go on works Christmas do's....... Not that that would make me miss this match!!!!!!!

Luton Roman wrote:Yep, 6751 crowd, Rovers had a decent team then, Marcus Stewart had a field day.

I think it was Paul Miller that scored four. Biggest crowd I've seen inside TP.

I was in in the family stand with dad and granddad. We left before the end. Unlike East Thurrock, I didn't head to a pub straight after.

Pretty sure there wasn't segregation?

There was no segregation - I remember standing behind the Bath end goal where a group of guys wearing Roman helmets were in amongst a mass of Rovers fans. No problems - only friendly banter, although the early sending-off and the strength of the Rovers team at that time meant their fans were pretty relaxed about the outcome. There are calls on their fans forums for no segregation at the Mem for this match but the police have the final say and will probably stick rigidly to the normal rules. Good picture on the front of the program that day - Adie Mings in Roman regalia alongside Dennis Booth (Rovers assistant manager) in pirate costume plus blue & white wig.

Yes, that was back in the day that the programme cover was the same throughout the season, but as a one-off they amended it. I think Neil and/or Keith Brookman edited ours then, last I heard one of them edits the Rovers one. The Rovers programme used to be very pirate orientated with the line-ups on a scroll-like design on the back quite a lot. Was quite artistic. They always had a reputation of producing an excellent programme, though I haven't been there since their heady League One days in 2009, they stuffed Hartlepool on the final game of the season when I last went along.

Who will play the parts this time around? Chas as the Roman?

Checking the archive 2 days later we had 450 to see us beat Farnborough, so not a modern phenomeonon LOL

Luton Roman wrote:Checking the archive 2 days later we had 450 to see us beat Farnborough, so not a modern phenomeonon LOL

Good job there wasn't a message board back in those days!

I also remember the last game against Rovers well. Grantley got sent off - in those days we had some real 'hard men' as well as Grantley there was Mings and Ricketts. Also Nicky Brooks in midfield was no fairy. Not sure how this lot would fare today with some of the soft bookings we have seen recently, don't think Grantley would be on the field much. Seem to remember a picture of him in some newspaper alongside his dog, some sort of bull dog. They were both scowling and difficult to work out which looked the most threatening.
Keith Brookman has been working full time for Rovers and does the commentary on Radio Bristol of their matches.

We also had Screen Soccer cover both our teams at one point, I think they disbanded a couple of years ago.

I didn't go to that Farnborough game so clearly I was a glory hunter back then.

Despite the result, which was never in doubt, especially after Grantley's red card, it was a great day. Both sets of supporters mixing together. Friendly banter on the Pop Side. I was claiming the right to my usual place whilst a load of Rovers fans claimed it was their usual spot. All good fun.
Looking forward to it.

Segregation is a must if we want to create a decent noise. Can we have some more voices to add to the usual suspects please