BRSC Chair Jim Chappells’ programme notes in tomorrow night’s The Pirate.
Welcome all from the Supporters Club to another season full of action at the Memorial Stadium – well we hope and expect it to be full of action anyway! I have seen most of the pre-season ‘warm-up’ matches and have generally been very impressed by all of Darrell Clarke’s summer signings. Both the new ‘keepers have looked good and the Boss will have had a a few tough selection choices to make, in addition as to who is to stand guard of the ‘sticks’, prior to last Saturday’s difficult start at the Valley, this column having to be written before that opening League clash. That quite long list of ‘friendly’ matches culminated of course with the visit of Premiership Club West Bromwich Albion for Peter Aitken’s Testimonial here ten days ago and his old team-mate Tony Pulis did Pete and the rest of us the honour of seeing his full first-team squad in action. Better still the ‘Baggies’ were duly put to the sword by Rovers and let’s hope we were able to repeat the trick at Charlton!
A decent crowd turned out to bid farewell to ‘Charlie’ and it gave us match-day volunteers a nice game to get back ‘into the swing’ of ticket and programme selling without the pressure of going into a big home League match. Peter kindly allowed the Supporters Club to run a 50/50 Draw on behalf of the Rovers’ Academy on what was after all his big day so we were grateful for that.
The day after the Albion game many of us were back here for Rovers’ Annual Open Day and there was an excellent turnout in sunshine and showers. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves as usual and the Supporters Club’s volunteers were kept busy selling-off stock, memberships, away travel and, of course, running Dave Hewitt’s famous tombola. My thanks go to Helen, Janet, Sue, Angela, David, Jamie, John, Dave and Geoff for their efforts on the day. We raised a good sum of money for the Club and made a few people happy in the process!
This evening we are off on the Cup road again with a return to the competition that last season gave us a night out to remember when Rovers took the eventual runaway Premiership Champions to the wire in an exciting clash in front of a 40,000 crowd at Stamford Bridge. It would be nice to enjoy a repeat of that game or something like it but I’m sure ‘Gaffers’ old club will have ambitions of their own so please get behind the boys in blue and let’s get the ‘home ball’ rolling tonight! Enjoy!
Jim Chappell.
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