This Saturday Bristol Rovers travel to Barnsley for the third time this year, hoping for a better result than on the previous two occasions.
On 13th January this year, just two days after his wife had given birth to their second child, manager Matt Taylor made two changes to his starting XI, as both Grant Ward and Connor Taylor missed out through injury.
Devanti Cole opened the scoring for the home side in the 43rd minute, but Rovers equalised, through Chris Martin, in the 68th minute.
Barnsley went on to take all three points, though, as Corey O’Keeffe scored what proved to be the winning goal with 17 minutes remaining.
Rovers ended the day in 11th place in the League One standings and fielded the following team; Cox, Grant, Connolly (Gibbons, 80), Crama, Thomas (Collins, 80), Finley, McCormick (Hunt, 66), Vale, Evans, Brown (Marquis, 66), Martin.
Jed Ward, Luca Hoole and Scott Sinclair were our unused substitutes and the attendance was 11,786 with 512 Gasheads in attendance.
Barnsley were 2-1 winners again in the league encounter at Oakwell on 7th September this year and on this occasion Taylor made just the one change to his starting lineup, bringing in Luke McCormick for Kamil Conteh who was away on international duty with Sierra Leone.
Davis Keillor-Dunn, making his Barnsley debut, opened the scoring after just 11 minutes but Ruel Sotiriou scored his first Rovers goal to get us back on level terms after 37 minutes.
Barnsley wrapped up all three points, though, when Adam Phillips netted in the 65th minute and Rovers ended the day in 14th place in the league.
The following Rovers side were in action that day; Griffiths, Moore, Wilson, Mola, Ward (Shaw, 78), Omochere, Sotiriou (O’Donkor, 62), Thomas (Sinclair, 78), Garrett, McCormick (Forde, 78), Bilongo (Sousa, 67).
Connor Taylor and Isaac Hutchinson remained on the bench, the attendance was 9,325 and 337 Gasheads made the long trip to Oakwell for the match. The game also marked Shaq Forde’s league debut for the club.
This weekend’s match is, of course, in the Second Round of the FA Cup and the sides have met twice before in this competition with Barnsley scoring four goals on each occasion.
The first meeting was back on 5th February 1910 when the Yorkshire side were 4-0 winners at Oakwell. In fact, Rovers were drawn at home, but accepted £500 from the Yorkshire side to play at Oakwell.
Fast forward to 13th February 1999 and Rovers again faced The Tykes on their home patch, and once again conceded four goals though they did have a consolation goal by Jason Roberts to show for their efforts.
That game belonged to the home side’s Craig Hignett who scored a hat trick. Bruce Dyer scored the other Barnsley goal, while Roberts scored late on for Rovers.
The attendance was 17,508 and Rovers lined up as follows; Jones, Pritchard, Foster, Trought, Challis, Trees (Low, 65), Shore, Lee (Penrice, 65), Leoni, Cureton, Roberts.
The unused substitutes were Smith, Meaker and Kuipers.
While manager Matt Taylor takes a leave of absence due to an ongoing family matter he will be uppermost in everyone’s thoughts this weekend and we all wish him well and look forward to seeing him back on the touchline.
In his absence David Horseman and Wayne Carlisle will be taking charge of this weekend’s Second Round tie. We wish them, and the team, success on the road as we are long overdue a win at Oakwell!
To all Gasheads travelling to the game, we wish you a safe journey there and back and hope you see a Rovers win