After 18 terrible months, 18 months with no live football, no fans in stadiums, not being able to travel any further than your local shop let alone away, the prospect of a Tuesday night in Accrington felt like an all-expenses paid trip to a sun-drenched oasis.
Continue reading “Accrington Stanley 1-0 Doncaster Rovers: 250 word match report”
Going to watch football in 2020-21 wasn’t easy. Professional football was a lockout. And as local and national lockdowns came and went, so too did differing restrictions on was accessible. Even when I found games I could attend, navigating my way into them wasn’t always easy.
Continue reading “How I watched football: 2020-21”
They’re here, they’re there, they’re every f***ing where! Yep, it’s finally time for the Covid-delayed and needlessly continent-scattered European Championships of 2020. And even though England, Wales and Scotland have all qualified, it’s nice to have a back up stream of disappointment handy. So, we decided to host a charity sweepstake
Continue reading “popular STAND’s Euro 2020 charity sweepstake”
In issue 104 of popular STAND, published to coincide with James Coppinger’s final game for Doncaster Rovers, editor Glen Wilson tried to comprehend life without the talismanic midfielder.
Continue reading “Turn On, Tune In, Copps Out”
Perhaps the greatest tribute Rovers could offer in a year of false dawns over lockdown-easing and returns to normality, was a season that got us all excited about what was coming, only to emphatically disappoint and then drag on longer than anyone really cared for it. I laid the groundwork for issue 103 by telling you how upbeat the contents were, ‘a true testament to the hope and excitement that Darren Moore’s Rovers have offered us’. Come this release of 104 and that statement has aged like a fine milk.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine: issue 104”
In issue 103 of popular STAND fanzine, editor Glen Wilson tried to shake off the mundanity of lockdown, by revisiting some past footballing hate.
Continue reading “Magic Hate Ball”
If you thought the two-and-a-half week Covid-19-induced break Rovers had to face in late December was frustrating, spare a thought for Doncaster Rovers Belles. It’s now three months since the team took to the field in National League Division One Midlands, and that’s in a season which saw a six-week halt in November, having not begun until mid-September.
Continue reading “This Girl Khan”
When you’re producing four issues a season, you’d expect to have a reasonably clear picture of how that campaign is going to pan out by the time the third one reaches the hands of the reader. But this isn’t a regular season. It’s one that we’re increasingly unlikely to be present to see any of, and it’s one of such stop-startedness that when the bulk of this issue was written, even though we were bidding farewell to January, Rovers still had half of their league games yet to play.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine: issue 103”
It’s 19 years since I left Doncaster but I’ve not lost the accent. Nor have I lost that ingrained sense of pragmatism that comes with growing up in the town. So before the fixtures had even been released for the current season I’d come to the terms with the fact I was unlikely to see Rovers play in it. I haven’t had a season ticket in a decade, I live 200 miles away. If there’s to be a pecking order I’m lower mid table at best. Continue reading “The Only Fan in The Valley”
Don’t call it a comeback. To be fair, when I elected to take a break from popular STAND 17 months ago, I didn’t expect the world as we know it to grind to a halt. It would be particularly pretentious to suggest these two things are directly connected, but we miss one season in 22 years and suddenly the final League One standings are being calculated on the back of a fag packet and the FA can’t bring themselves to let fans back into football grounds. So yeah, let’s not call it a comeback. It’s much more of an intervention. Continue reading “Don’t call it a comeback”
popular STAND fanzine 