At the end of the summer I sat in the same spot I’m writing this editorial, whilst Richie Wellens looked back at me and my decor via Zoom, and told me that he didn’t foresee Rovers being in a relegation battle come the second half of the season. A couple of weeks later Gavin Baldwin told the BBC that ‘we are nowhere near [a relegation battle] at this stage’.
Continue reading “Editorial: Where did it all go wrong for Doncaster Rovers in 2021-22?”
Well, thank God that’s all over. A terrible season that started badly and never really looked like getting better. A 46 game-long slow trudge towards League Two. Each of our most recent engagements with the fourth tier have ended in promotion… it’s hard to see 2022-23 going a similar way.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine issue 108”
This is only the penultimate edition of the fanzine for 2021-22, but you won’t have to get far through its pages to see that the majority of our correspondents are already accepting of it ending in relegation. Rovers have had a mini resurgence, just before this issue went to print, but it hasn’t been enough of a revival to switch faint hopes the way of creeping beliefs.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine issue 107”
On the opening page of issue 105 of popular STAND I promised that we wouldn’t be bottom of League One by the time issue 106 came round. I have to be honest, I was hoping to be somewhat higher than 23rd, but hey, a win’s a win.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine: issue 106”
New season, new manager, new players; a fresh start, a time for optimism. Right? Well ordinarily yes, least that’s usually the case when we put out our first issue of a Rovers campaign.
Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine: issue 105”
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”
A timely delve into our archive, finds this piece from issue 82 of the fanzine when, as Rovers hurtled towards relegation off the back of a 17 game winless run, John Coyle took a look at seasons in which the club has faltered after Christmas.
Continue reading “Voice of the Pop Side: Down with the Decorations”
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”
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”
98… 99… 100! Coming, ready or not, it’s the centenary edition of popular STAND fanzine. Yep, in an era when print was supposed to be dead we’ve blindly persisted to somehow emerge with a ton of editions and a readership larger than ever before. One hundred bloody issues, twenty one years, and still only £1. We spoil you, we really do. Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine issue 100”
popular STAND fanzine 