Welcome (again) to Viva Rovers

Doncaster Rovers have a recent history of coming back from the brink in emphatic fashion. I’m hoping the same can be said for Viva Rovers.

Frosty Reception

You know those folk who often stand in town centres preaching, with placards proclaiming ‘The End of the World is Nigh”? Turns out they’ve gone for the wrong message to initiate moralistic panic and outrage. If they really want to stir up a fuss then they should cover their signs over and re-daub them with the message “Rovers Game Frozen Off”. If the level of feeling about this postponement on internet messageboards is to be believed then even Thierry Henry is currently sat in a villa in Barcelona thankful that he only committed that handball, and not the ultimate crime of declaring a Rovers match postponed.

Fox Hunting – Leicester City preview

Do you remember the last time Rovers played Leicester City? Do you really? If you do I’ll be impressed as chances are you probably not even sure why you wandered onto this website in the first place. You’ll know you came on here for a purpose, but you’ll not be able to remember what it was now your here. December 1956. Thats the last time these two sides met, probably in snow, and most certainly in black and white.  Leicester won that match 2-0 at Belle Vue fifty-three years ago, so throw down your Just for Men Gift Box and new slippers, it’s finally time for revenge.

Coventry City 1-0 Doncaster Rovers

Football has gone very odd. On days like today I don’t get how it can still take itself seriously. On arrival at Coventry City’s ground today, we headed inside a door to find some toilets and a bar and suddenly found ourselves inside a casino. There were blokes in replica shirts and scarves having a pint, and none of them seemed at all moved by the fact they were doing this at the base of a water feature laden staircase, beneath a huge chandelier surrounded by roulette wheels. Thats not right. This was the kind of place you don’t see in daylight and are only reminded you’ve been when you come across a flyer or a poker chip in the depths of your jacket pocket some weeks later and even then its just a hazy memory of green felt and revolving fruit images until you have rung a mate and ask “You know Tommo’s birthday? Did we end up in a f***ing Casino?” This was not the place to be reading a matchday programme, and shame on anyone who managed to do so without fearing for their very soul.

Merry Christmas from Viva Rovers

Merry Christmas to all our readers from Viva Rovers, thanks for your support during a tumultuous 2009 and all the best for the New Year ahead.

Ricoh ho ho – Coventry City preview

Lets be honest, there really isn’t anything more festive than a trip to Coventry. Turkey? presents? family arguments? No, ignore all them, nothing signifies Yuletide more than a trip to the 1950s Gibson planned concrete angular jungle of Coventry. As Boxing Day fixtures go, this is an odd match up, with games at this time of year often regionalised, it is a far cry from the more recent ‘derby’ games with Scarborough, Scunthorpe, Bradford and Forest. Still Boxing Day is always football in our house, so onwards to the Ricoh we go.

Viva Video XXVII

Regular visitors to Viva Rovers will know that every Friday we select a relevent video from the depths of the internet for your enjoyment. As this Friday fell on Christmas Day we have elected to not only bring episode twenty-seven forward a day, but also ensure that it is suitably festive too. As football is not played in Santa-hats, and as Christmas parties have been renamed ‘golf trips’, that left one obvious option for us. Football-wise few things make you feel more festive that playing in a snowstorm.

Celebrity Fan Club; #12 Father Christmas

OK, its time to draw a big fat festive line under this feature. Despite having two further celebrity Rovers fans recommended to me in the past week (thank you to Gavin and Mike for your suggestions) there could only be one man to which we could dedicate this feature on Christmas Eve. Yep, it’s the big man himself, the only man in red and white to be talked about more than Billy Sharp this week, it’s Father Christmas.

Neil Diamond

After scoring in six consecutive games its understandable that all the attention has been on Billy Sharp of late. His current record is aiding his gradual progression into Rovers’ goalscoring folklore so that in fifty years time we can all tell embellished tales of his goalscoring exploits to impress our grandkids. “I tell you, he scored at Derby one Christmas, when the pitch was under four feet of snow and he hit past the Derby ‘keeper so hard it not only burst the net, but carried on across the county before being brought to an eventual halt by Chesterfield’s St Marys and All Saints Church; thats why the spire remains bent to this day.”  Anyway, despite the understandable hype, there is another Rovers player edging towards another club record.

That’s Life

So, where would you put Doncaster Rovers in the grand scheme of all things 2009? I don’t mean amongst your own priorities, I mean ultimately, in world events. Take your time. So, where did you pigeon-hole them? If your answer is slap bang in between Kanye West making an arse of himself at an awards show and Barrack Obama making himself at home in the White House then surprisingly you’re right.

Derby County 0-2 Doncaster Rovers

For months after the Conference play-offs I had a painful souvenir of every game. My right knuckle was grazed from inadvertently striking the wall of the Pop Stand in celebration of Tris Whitman’s equaliser. My left knuckle carried the dried blood of a similar altercation with the back of the stand at Chester following the penalty shoot-out, whilst my shins had been removed of much skin by the seat backs at Stoke as (Sir) Francis Tierney scored that goal. I said in the preview of today’s fixture that it would not be as good as last season’s trip to Derby and whilst that remains the case I am destined to carry a reminder of it for some time as I now have a souvenir similar to those afforded in that play-off run. So energetic were our celebrations of Rovers’ second goal that I left much of my right shin on the back of seat JJ754 at Pride Park. So welcome and joyous was the victory that it was not for another three hours that I noticed. Altogether now “Jingle belles, Jingle bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to see Rovers win away”.