Friday, August 03, 2012

Bristol Derby: City-Rovers

Tomorrow marks a milestone in pre-season as we take on our toughest opponents of the summer so far. In our first meeting since 2007, when Rovers ran out 1-0 winners at the Mem, we go head to head with our local rivals in Louis Carey's testimonial match at Ashton Gate.

The match was met with criticism at the time with fans of both clubs suggesting it wasn't a good idea at this stage of pre-season (just 2 weeks away from our first league game). Crowd trouble were also cited as a reason why the friendly shouldn't take place as Avon and Somerset police are charging incredible prices to patrol the streets surrounding Ashton Gate tomorrow afternoon. As a result there were fears that there wouldn't be a large enough attendance to break even but those worries have been allayed with a late flurry of ticket sales. Rovers will deck out the East End with 1400 Gasheads which, bearing in mind none can be bought on the day, is a fantastic turnout.

I was among the fans who thought this wasn't a good idea at the time and I didn't like the idea of paying hard-earned money in benefit of a sheed. But as the game drew nearer and my cravings to watch Rovers increased I felt this was an opportunity too good to miss out on. It'll be my first chance to see our new boys in action and I'm sure I'll be more excited by our prospects next season once I have seen how they play. Obviously friendly games are purely for fitness and to blood new tactics and players but this game has much stronger emotions attached to it. It's never 'just a friendly' for the supporters and I'm hoping we retain our current bragging rights by upsetting Derek McInnes' Championship outfit on their own patch. Why not?

Garry Kenneth should feature tomorrow afternoon
David Clarkson will have something to prove against his former employers whilst Joe Anyinsah is also an ex-City player with more than one reason to go out and impress. If either score the winning goal tomorrow you can imagine how they'll celebrate. It's a chance for Garry Kenneth and Rogvi Baldvinsson to get a taster of our vociferous support and gain further experience of playing with their new team-mates so they'll want to play a blinder in such a big game. Of course, we haven't got all the players signed up that we want but hopefully Fabian Broghammer will be in the squad to terrorise the City full-backs. For the rest of the squad they'll want to leave a reminder with Mark McGhee of their ability ahead of August 14th and our visit to Portman Road to play Ipswich.

I'm looking forward to the match now. 50% of my excitement stems from not having seen Rovers play in 3 months since the Dagenham debacle and the other 50% is because we're playing Bristol City. Hopefully our performance will provide further encouragement heading in to the season and give us a victory over our local rivals that the players will remember for a long time. I can feel a 1-0 victory coming on.

Up the Gas!

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