By Nathan Jackson
June 2 2005

Bristol Rovers were one of the pre-season favourites to go up but 21 draws speaks for itself. No-one outside of the top three in the Premiership lost fewer home games but no-one in the country drew more games and that is what ultimatly cost them the promotion they believe they deserve.

Team Manager : Ian Atkins (everyone's friend)

Average Crowd : 7,077 (Highest : 9,295, Lowest : 5,294)

Season Review: When the season starts, you can always be guaranteed of a few things. One is that Lincoln will only win a mere handful of their first 10 games, Barry Hearn threatening to give the Orient boss the sack he doesn't win promotion and Ian Atkins will guarantee promotion for his side. To be fair, he had assembled a good squad during the summer and looked like challenging for a while and even topped the table at the end of August but eventually limped away.

Inconsistency wasn't really a problem, 21 draws shows that, however, if they had a similar record away to which they had at home, they would have easily gained promotion. Rovers only lost 1 game at home all season, the lowest outside of the Premiership's top 3. That defeat came to Scunny. Now, when you hear a team only lost once at home all season, you usually think that's a really good record and that they picked up a lot of points at home. That would be true if they hadn't drawn 12 of the 23 games at the Memorial Stadium.

Biggest Wins : Chester (4-1)

Biggest Defeats : Scunthorpe (4-0 and 3-0)

Top Goalscorer : Junior Agogo (19)

Turning Point of the Season - It's not often you get a turning point in August but Bristol Rovers beat Southend in the last game of August to take them top, after that they slowly went down the table at a very steady pace.

Next Season? : I honestly can't see Bristol Rovers challenging for promotion. They might be there for a brief time at the beginning of the season but they stand no chance of even a top 10 finish if they don't start turning draws into wins.

 

Interview with a Bristol Rovers fan

Name : Mike Partridge


In one sentence not exceeding 10 words, describe your season : Draw after draw after draw after draw after draw.


Was your season a success or a disappointment? A disappointment, we wanted to be at least in the playoffs but as usual, we faded away very quickly.


Your Player of the Season: Junior Agogo

Best performance of the season : Chester at home


Worst performance of the season : Both the Scunny games.

From what you've seen of the 4 promoted sides, do you feel that they all deserved promotion? Yeovil and Scunny, definatly but not the other two.


From what you saw of the 2 relegated sides, do you feel that they deserved relegation? I thought both were a little unlucky because they were far better than Shrewsbury, Chester or Rushden but at the end of the day, the League table doesn't lie.


Best Opposition: Scunny

Best Opposition Player: Paul Hayes of Scunny

Least Favourite Opposition Player: Phil Jevons


Least Favourite Opposition Manager: Steve Evans

Finally, how do you believe you will do in 2005/6? If we can get our act together then I can't see any reason why we can't be at least in the playoffs.