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”
As I sit and write this editorial, Twitter and indeed much of the British media, is vehemently condemning the racist abuse of England’s footballers during the national team’s match in Montenegro. And rightly so. Continue reading “Editorial: calling out racism begins at home”
It’s been a long old month or so at Rovers; disappointing defeats, frustrating draws, injuries to key players. But just as you may’ve been about to lose hope Tuesday came with some welcome cheer. Yep, issue 99 of popular STAND fanzine had been successfully sent off to the printers. Oh, and Rovers beat Bristol Rovers 4-1. Again.
Got a bit of a temperature? Find yourself inexplicably desperate to be in a hat? Can’t go outside without being hit in the head by a form book tossed from nextdoor’s bedroom? Yep, I’m afraid you’ve got Cup Fever, and the only known cure is to get yourself down to the Keepmoat Stadium for Rovers’ twenty-third consecutive FA Cup tie with Oldham. And good news, whilst you’re there you can get your hands on the latest issue of the double-award-winning popular STAND fanzine.
Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall? Course you’re not. It’s 2018. And we all live in rented accommodation as we can’t afford to buy houses, so if we did hang a stocking on the wall we’d only be lumbered with a ‘stocking damage fee’ from our letting agent. Still, it is nearly Christmas, and have we got the perfect present for you? No, no we haven’t. That was intended to be rhetorical to be honest. But we have got a new issue of popular STAND fanzine on sale, so at least that’s something.
I’m writing this editorial on the day of FIFA’s annual The Best Football Awards. Ordinarily I’d be oblivious to this; not today. But that’s only because they happen to be taking place at my workplace. Right now, as I look out of the office window, tuxedoed men I don’t recognise are being ushered towards a row of photographers, a line of glamorous young women in shiny frocks are being used as window dressing on a staircase, blokes in hi-vis vests are keeping tourists behind distant barriers and an invisible man on a microphone is encouraging anyone who can hear him to ‘get ready to make some noise for Joachim Low’. Continue reading “Editorial: On being thankful for being far removed from FIFA”
Remember the last time we put an issue of popular STAND fanzine on sale back at the start of the season? If you missed issue 95, it was essentially forty pages of people being decidedly unenthusiastic about the football ahead, trying to justify their attendance, and generally fearing the worst. What a bloody difference two months can make. Continue reading “popular STAND fanzine issue 96”
