Away The Gas
by Darren Stobbs
Ahead of this FA Cup Second Round match I was thinking it was long time since we had a Third Round tie against one of big guns in the Premier League.
The last time we had a decent cup draw was when we played Chelsea away in 2016, only just losing by a 3-2 scoreline – that being in the League Cup.
Our coach driver, Dan, made the credible effort of eight hours work to decorate his coach with tinsel and lights, for anyone who wanted to get into the Christmas spirit; whoever didn’t would have to put up with it!
We left The Mem at 9:30am for the trip to Vale Park, with The Potteries outfit struggling at the bottom of League One. With ourselves also struggling, I was still confident of getting a victory in a game to start getting our form back on track.
As we were leaving, the news came through of a planned pitch inspection at 10:45am, with all the recent rainfall and also during the morning of the match. We decided to stop at Frankley Services for 35 minutes, to await the outcome, and it was confirmed that the match would go ahead. We arrived in Burslem at 12:30pm, but that was when the confusion started!
We headed to the ground, as we had always parked behind the away end, whichever end of the ground we were allocated. We were then told to head for Federation Road, which is just under half a mile from the away end and that it was £25 to park on a public road with no double yellow lines!
Ourselves and our coach driver refused to pay this, in the most nonsense parking charge situation I have come across on the coach. We have less able supporters on our coach and we cannot expect them to walk up the hill to the ground for half a mile, so we headed back to the ground to drop everybody off.
The stewards and police were most unhelpful and despite our coach driver getting a telling off, they could not see our point of view.
After doing some research we found that the Social Club at the ground is now for home supporters only, which is disappointing as in past seasons it worked well, with ourselves and Vale supporters having no issues there. The pubs near to the ground are also for Vale supporters, so myself and Matt headed to The Moorland Inn pub, about three quarters of a mile from Vale Park. A chain pub, it had a mix of home and away supporters with the live match on the TV’s.
We met up with a friend I knew, who moved up to that part of the country, who happens to be a City supporter! He came to Burton away last season, so I am slowly trying to covert him to a Gashead!
On the way back to the ground, passing through the local streets were a local busy cafe, a chip shop and an oatcakes shop – which was a tempting option! We headed to the ground and on offer for food, was the usual array of options.
I decided to have Pukka sausage roll, which turned out to be one of the worst I have had and certainly not ‘Pukka!’. It seemed to be undercooked and also lukewarm. My friend’s pie was too hot to handle, so certainly a contrast!
On to the match and the build up music cannot be missed at Port Vale, ‘Penny Arcade’ by Roy Orbison, ‘The Wonder Of You’, by Elvis Presley and ‘Let Me Entertain You’, by Port Vale fan Robbie Williams.
The game turned out to be quite a dour affair, with two poor teams. It was a game which either side had the opportunity to take advantage of. In the 25th minute, Vale should have been reduced to 10 men as their
number 17 clearly punched a Rovers player, in amongst a melee that had started, but was only given a yellow card along with three other players.
The only goal came just after the second half started, with a ball over the top and a simple finish past Luke Southwood.
Neither goalkeeper had a great deal to do, but Southwood pulled off one great save to keep us in the match and a decent save by the Vale goalkeeper kept Ellis Harrison’s effort out. It was certainly a missed opportunity for Rovers, although our forward play just didn’t produce enough quality in the final third of the pitch.
Attendance: 3,227 with 332 Rovers supporters.
The Supporters Coach Man of the Match, along with my own vote, was Bryant Bilongo, and many of our supporters couldn’t quite work out why he was substituted during the second half, as he was certainly a danger to Port Vale going forwards.
It was confirmed that our coach was sent back to Federation Road, with no exceptions made to pick up our coach passengers at the ground. So we had to get our mob together, to make our way down the hill back to the coach.
We then left Port Vale at 5:25pm and went straight back to Bristol, arriving at The Mem at 7:40pm.
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