Other Business

[Tuffley Rebel]

For those that might be interested, last night I went to the local derby Gloucestershire Senior Cup 2nd round game, Gloucester City v Cheltenham Town.

The history between the two clubs is remarkably similar to us and Wycscum. A few years back Chelt came 2nd in the Southern Premier above Glos on goal diff and gained promotion to the football conference. Two years later they are in the football league, get promoted and are now back in the old 3rd division. Meanwhile, Gloucester have had financial problems and are staying playing in the Southern Premier. Sound familiar. Last time these two played a league game the att. was over 3000 and there was some slight trouble on the terraces. If you read the 'Tiger Roar' website you will see the Glos fans are well known hooligans. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Before the game I jokingly sent a text that the police were getting the riot gear on. When I approached the ground I was amazed to find this was true. In the car park were three police vans, and at the turnstiles the police were dressed in combat gear and doing random searches. I thought they must be expecting a big crowd, I was wrong. Once inside i saw a crowd of around 350, about 60 Chelt fans.

The ground itself, Meadow park, is of a very good standard for this level of footy and IMO could comfortably host conference football. The ground wa\s segregated and the away fans were housed at the Northern end on a shallow uncovered terrace which holds about 300. On the east side in the corner is a two storey changing block and social club run by the club. It seemed well used and the notice board was full of forthcoming events,it must bring a fair amount of money. Just what STFC need. Next is the standard nonleague toilet block with no lighting, broken tiles and windows over looking the pitch. Then straddling the half way line is the main stand which seats about 600 and has three distinctly non luxury boxes for directors, sponsors etc. At the south end of the ground is the well renowned T-end. Tonight behind the SE corner of this stand was a mobile CCTV police van and more policeman. I read before the game that the Glos fans don't swap ends at HT, I thought this was end but now understand why. For a non- league ground the T-end is fairly impressive, it is a full length end terrace with full covering and 10 fairly steep steps with a crush barrier halfway up. Nearly all the home fans were in this end, probably only 20 or so fans stood down the west side of the ground which was a shallow covered terrace.

The T-end was full of middle aged men and teenage chavs, I could only see one woman. I was now beginning to understand why Glos have a hooligan

rep. I my initial thought was this end would make a lot of noise.

The game started with Chelt playing mainly their reserves with two 1st team strikers. It was definately capital league quality, but when a I started a random clap I got some very funny looks.

The first chant wasn't until 20 mins, City City City. It was like this for the rest of the game, no atmosphere, no comedy, no passion, almost no singing. They only had three songs. Most of the terrace talk was about how the police almost outnumbered the fans. Apparently the showing was so heavy because they were acting on intelligence from the net.

End of part 1. Running out of time, To be continued. If you want me to.

[Barry Scott]

im on the edge of my seat!

[BFR]

Nearly as exciting as my trip to the wicky wicky wild wild west on sunday, but as roger would say, what's that got to do with football?

[Tuffley Rebel]

Got some more time, part 2 coming, just for you Rebelboy.

Nobody knew what the intelligence was or what website, but I did hear that before the game a couple of large groups were deterred from entering the ground by the large police presence.

Inside the T-end there were no anti Chelt cahnts but i was surprised to hear several racist comments aimed at the Chelt strikers. I don't think the people shouting them intended it with any seriousness, I think it was comments that in this part of the country the general society seem to find acceptable, more a case of ignorance.

 

At half time i went in to the club shop hut, run by the supporters club. There was all the merchandise usually seen, mugs, scarves, tops etc, but what caught me was the boxes full of old programmes from all over the country. For a program collector like me, this was great. It was mainly non-league but also some pro. I managed to find two STFC home programmes and one away STFC.

The home are Dec 30 2003 v Canvey Island, and Feb 2004 v ?. In both of them Steve Brown mentions the criticism from fans and press, the boycott by fans and the possibility of leaving WP. I've not got them on me now but the names from the team I remember are Honey, Mautone, Stott, Hardyman, Denton, Daly, Rainford, Deaner, Markman. It's the season we lost to Tonbridge in the cup. The players sponsorship page is nowhere near as full as today s programme, but there were two manes I recognised GT and EG joint sponsoring a player and GT sponsoring another, I think it was A. Deaner. The away programme I picked up was Sutton away Sept 98. A game I attended, I might already have the programme, if I do I will bring the duplicate to the Welling game and whoever asks first can have it. All programmes were selling for 20p each, it reminded me of the hut, bus type thing they use to have at WP that use to sell old programmes, does anyone know what happened to them, who owned them, if they're still available?

 

The second half started, more capital league two footed tackles with a referee that seemed to be watching another game. Not a single booking despite some potentially leg breaking tackles and unsportsmanlike behaviour from the Chelt goalie.

As the game progressed it was clear neither side was going to score and that extra time was certein. The Glos player-manager ? Burns decide to introduce some subs. The players he bought on were clearly fresh out of school and played with more passion for the shirt than any of the others. A gent next to me said they were from the Glos youth program that over the years has produced several 1st team players. I also found the club run a senior ladies side and several junior sides for both sexes run in coordination with the local sunday league junior clubs. A partnership that benefitted all and something that STFC needs, if only we haf a ground in our home town. It saddens me to see this sucess at other clubs knowing we had a this a few years back during the McDermott era.

 

The game did go into et and Chelt scored in the 92 min. This was the cue for the home fans to start leaving. Chelt scored again in the 115 min, at which point the ground promptly emptied, the Glos players had runout of steam and couldn't keep up with the pros. Todays local paper had a small article about the game place after two pages of rugby. The att. was stated as 364, but it looked higher than that.

 

My thoughts are that Glos are very similar to STFC in terms of size, history and potential and could easily draw 4 figure crowds if they played in the conference, despite having fierce competition from 16 local amateur rugby clubs and the professional Gloucester Rugby Club who regularly have 12000 sellouts. All in a city with a population of approx 150000. The difference here is that the residents are very loyal to there city and each city and you don't see hundreds, thousands of them getting on the train each Saturday to go and watch the local Premier league side like they do in Slough. Also by looking around the ground it was clear that local businesses also supported the football club, every spare bit of wall or roof space was covered by advertising boards, this level of support STFC can only dream of. I think this is becuase it was mainly local business who care about the local side, unlike the multinational companies that have premises in Slough who couldn't give a [***!!***] about the rebels.

 

I will probably visit Meadow Park again, if only to find some more STFC programmes. The quality of play was not as good as the Rebels and the atmosphere was dull. They had no giant in defence like Daly, no midfield dynamo like Veli, no flying wingers like JC, Danny Steer or the Mullet and no burger eating prolific strikers like Ian Hodges, but the main reason I won't be rushing back to see a Tigers game is beacause IMO the crowd were nowhere near as friendly or funny as you guys that follow the Rebels. The Rebel army could teach this lot a thing or to when it comes to singing and terrace banter.

 

Finally I was surprised to hear they will also have a larger police presence for the game against Merthyr, because its a local-ish derby, english/welsh tribal thing and Merthyr are supposedly a bunch of thugs, and also the Aylesbury game because there is a history of trouble between the Tigers and the Ducks because Bristol City fans infiltrate Glos and West Ham fans infiltrate Aylesbury.

 

Hope my report wasn't to boring, if it was you shouldn't of bothered reading part 2.

 

See you all soon.

 

ps Rog if you want me to get you a mug let me know.

[GarySTFC]

Who scored for Chelt?

[Barry Scott]

the Tigers and the Ducks? Seems a bit one sided to me...

[brighton_rebel]

Tuffley

Why don't you knock the article together and send it to glenriley77@aol.com to see if he'll put it in the programme. I thought what you wrote was interesting; can you imagine riot cops at Stag Meadow? Seems like it was a league type game with no league type atmosphere. And i think you're comparisons with Slough are worthwhile

 

brighton rebel

[mal316]

I will have you know that when we played Woking, I think, in the early nineties we had a couple of vans full of the Thames Valley's finest on stand by in the car park.

[Woody SUFC]

and this season a riot fan turned up with one copper in it!!

[Woody SUFC]

Forgot to mention this is very much like Humpty's Dairy of a Windsor fan which has it's own website and is SOMETIMES in the programe!

[GarySTFC]

Humpty has a dairy? Awesome.

[Barry Scott]

what about Dumpty?

[Woody SUFC]

wahey!!! Good one!!

 

 

No Really

[BFR]

Quote:

mal316 said:
I will have you know that when we played Woking, I think, in the early nineties we had a couple of vans full of the Thames Valley's finest on stand by in the car park.

Problem with that Mal is you couldn't see they were there as the fog was too thick