The Story Behind Relegation Part 1

Billy Sharp Crippled on the opening day of the season

35 points. Bottom of the Championship. Resigned to League One Football. It was only 18 months ago we was all talking of Doncaster Rovers being the next Blackpool with an outside chance of making it into the play-offs or even the world of commercialisation that is the Premier League. How then did Doncaster Rovers end up bottom of the Championship with only 35 points, one of the worst goal differences in League football and relegated to League One?

In all honesty the season started bleakly for Doncaster before a ball was even kicked when the club mascot posed in a naughty shoot for a Sunday Newspaper with the ‘Donny Dog’ outfit (although she wasn’t wearing it). Admittedly she gave the money raised to charity but after her dismissal the club was in the papers, blackened with bad publicity. The signings of Kyle Bennet; a fast up and coming player from Bury, Richard Naylor; the experienced Centre-Back from Leeds and ex-Derby star Giles Barnes was all shadowed by the story that was in the national newspaper described as the “Donny Dog Scandall”. The club tried to move on quickly and establish the good name once again but it was always going to be a uphill struggle from there on in.

Looking back now, the fact that Giles Barnes joining Doncaster Rovers was described as “mouth-watering” by some fans show how poor our season has been, but nevertheless not many fans expected what would happen this season as nearly 2000 made their way south for the opening game of the season against Brighton. Rovers played Brighton (and lost) in their last ever home game in the Goldstone some 15 years ago and therefore for Doncaster Rovers to join Brighton in the first competitive game at the brand new American Express Stadium was somewhat fitting to the progress both clubs had made to bring their clubs back to the 2nd tier despite financial difficulties in the late 90s. On a personal note can I say what a stadium the Amex is by the way, refreshments served up American baseball style with a man walking round selling it from a fridge on his back; comfy cushioned seating and leg room galore. If I was a Brighton fan I’d say 14 years was worth the wait.

To be fair the Rovers made the brighter start to the campaign when talisman Billy Sharp gave us the 1-0 lead at half time, the usual brand of football that diminished towards the end of the 10/11 campaign was back on show and it looked like the worst of our injury crisis was over and this season we could start afresh. Brighton had other ideas though and after centre back Lewis Dunk crippled Billy Sharp with an horrific challenge and a clash with Hayter resulted in both Strikers being stretchered off the pitch and the scene was set for the hosts to comeback on a historic opening day of the season. Both goals came from Will Buckley; the winner coming some 9 minutes into injury time and despite the Rovers fans enthusiasm when Giles Barnes took to the field towards the 80 minute mark the Rovers were left considering what might of been.

Some more great football against West Ham and Nottingham Forest at home wasn’t enough to stop the away side walking away with a 1-0 win each time and after 3 losses Doncaster Rovers had nothing to show for it. Another defeat followed at the hands of Derby (3-0) away who were top of the table added insult to injury but before the international break James Hayter missed a penalty but scored with his head to salvage a point at home against struggling Bristol City.

5 games gone and only 1 point. 2 defeats away from home against 2 teams that were setting the pace at the top of the table with Southampton and 2 defeats on home soil against West Ham United and Nottingham Forest. On the face of it those results may have been expected throughout the season; because they were one after the other made it tough times for Sean O’Driscoll and most fans had seen enough and demanding if the results didn’t change, then the management should. Sean O’Driscoll was mostly being criticised for his poor substitutions of trying to take a draw from games and not using enough attacking subs. Milan Lalkovic signed on loan from Chelsea and away to Cardiff the Rovers were losing 1-0 at half time, O’Driscoll responded to the knee-jerks and brought on Lalkovic for a defender and the Rovers still couldn’t stop Cardiff winning 2-0; although in truth is was perhaps more comfortable for the hosts than the score-line suggested.

The next game would prove to be one of the biggest in the Rovers history; although at the time it didn’t seem like it. Reading were playing average football but wasn’t having the best of times at home this season, but with the Rovers only scoring one to their opponents 7 and Reading must have fancied their chances. The pressure was mounting on Sean O’Driscoll amidst rumours that he had ‘lost’ the dressing room and the players were no longer playing for him. On the day the Rovers just couldn’t seem to get the balance of attack and defence right and ex-Rotherham Adam Le-Fondre put the nail in the coffin as he scored and the Rovers walked away with another 2-0 defeat. Many fans were now questioning Sean O’Driscoll and whether he was the right man to lead Doncaster Rovers into a second relegation fight. Yes he did turn it round in 2008/09 against all the odds but some fans believed that this season was going to be a lost cause if he remained at the helm.

The following Thursday in a local newspaper Chairman John Ryan responded to what he called ‘hotheads’ by saying that “who could do a better job?” ”clubs that willy-nilly sack their managers end up relegated – we are not going down that path”. Doncaster Rovers were about to equal their club record of 20 games without a win if they didn’t pick up 3 points against Palace on Saturday. On the plus side it looked like Sean O’Driscoll had bought himself a little more time bringing in Jon “the beast” Parkin on loan to join the ranks of Milan Lalkovic, Chris Brown, James Hayter, players were returning from injury, even Billy Sharp was looking closer to becoming injury free weeks before expected.  and John Ryan had publicly backed the manager. There was a feeling of optimism in Doncaster on Thursday and the scene was set for Sean O’Driscoll and his men to end the bad streak and return Rovers to winning ways. I even said to myself on Thursday night; “our season starts here.”

So imagine my surprise when I woke up to find Sean O’Driscoll not only sacked but also replaced by Wrexham manager Dean Saunders. I thought it was a nightmare the first 3 times I read it on the club’s official website. There was no more than 3 sentences of recognition for all Sean O’Driscoll had done in his 5 years, no mention of compensation to Wrexham, or whether Dean Saunders was a temporary or permanent replacement. It looked like while everyone was believing that Sean O’Driscoll’s job was safe the day before; he was already sacked and being replaced. It still makes my stomach churn when thinking about it. On Thursday the story coming out of the club is that his job is as safe as Alex Ferguson’s on Friday he is relieved on his duties.

So ultimately the Reading game cost Sean O’Driscoll his job, yes the 18 games without a win before that contributed to his demise but Reading away was the decisive factor that swayed the Board’s hand to sack him. Little did we all know that months later Reading would be lifting the Championship crown. It turns out that the team we lost to, described as a game “we really should be winning” was a team that would go on to storm the league and finish as Champions. If I feel a sense of regret I don’t want to imagine how John Ryan or other Board Members felt watching Reading celebrate with the N-power Championship Trophy knowing that the defeat at their home ground (which will welcome Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United next season) was the defeat that swayed their hand to sack the Rovers manager who brought them all time highs.

But life goes on for Doncaster Rovers after Sean O’Driscoll, and if John Ryan thinks Dean Saunders is the man to move us forward then us as fans need to accept it and he was given a warm welcome at the Keepmoat a day into his job ahead of the game against Crystal Palace when the new era begins…

Windows 8 is finally here! (almost…)

Well the wait is finally over for the over exited Microsft fans who have spent the last year watching on as Apple sales shot through the roof with the launch of the Iphone 4S, with Siri; the talented combination of speech control and comforting a tech geek with the only female companion they may have. The death of Steve Jobs only helped the Apple’s popularity boost and Microsoft has been left in its tracks, again.

 

So have Windows finally put together the perfect product? Is Windows 8 all that it is shaped up to be? Will the shininess of the product wear out quickly or is Windows 8 finally going to challenge it’s competitors?

 

The problem this year is the market has changed completely; it is no longer a battle of PC’s and Laptops VS MacBooks and iMacs: Tablets now take up a huge chunk of the market and rather than launching a whole new operating system for Windows Tablets Microsoft have tried to combine Tablet and PC, and based it on the Metro UI of the greatly perceived Windows 7 Phone. So what makes Windows 8 tick?

 

The Big Changes;

 

When you first look at the Windows 8 consumer preview after 4 hours of downloading it onto your Windows 7 model, you get a warm feeling inside, unlike the past 6 versions of Windows; this is different, a whole new Metro Style User Interface that is amazingly more touch friendly than Windows 7 despite using the same machine, it just responds better and faster and that can make all the difference.

 

Because of the whole new interface that Microsoft have implemented there is some huge news: NO START BAR. You read that correct, there is no start bar, there is a Start Screen which admittedly does look astonishing at first look. It is from here you ‘pin’ your apps, web pages, files etc for easy reach. Whats more your start screen can be up to 20 lengths of your desktop giving you the freedom to swipe and browse through. But don’t worry if your old school and you have grown to the ‘Desktop’ because there is an app that takes you back to your Windows 7 Desktop (this is also used if you run Pre Windows 8 programmes), it looks exactly the same; except from now start icon in the bottom corner of your task bar. But admittedly after a few goes of using the start screen, the desktop starts to feel like your Sega Megadrive when you bought a PS2.

 

The next big change is the Windows 8 programmes, there is no red X that we all find ourselves tapping rapidly when a programme becomes unresponsive. Instead you just go to the next app and apparently Windows 8 will ‘kill’ the page for you later when it is 100% sure you no longer want to use that programme. Again don’t worry; in the windows 7 programmes your nice big red x is still available to click at will when you want to close something quickly.

 

Because it is both mouse and touch friendly, it does become a little confusing at times. There are all sorts of ‘swipes’ and techniques touch users have to learn in order to master Windows 8. To get the start bar to appear you have to swipe about an inch towards the right of your screen, swipe down about an inch to double click and swiping from the left switches between the apps your have running. The ‘snap’ feature of Windows 7 has been improved and it no longer is (although can be if your heart so desires) a 50:50 split, instead it is about 70:30 split so you can put news, weather, music etc., in 30% of the screen while you browse the latest articles of the Guardian on 70%. However with a mouse different functions are harder and you find yourself having to learn the old-school keyboard techniques such as pressing the start key, alt + tab etc.,

 

Overall it appears to be a very nice finish, yes it is different; but it is also the same. Personally I feel that currently it only reaches it’s full potential if one uses touch screens, and I would recommend the Dell Inspiron Duo; it is small enough to transform into a slightly larger than average tablet, but can easily go back to notebook instantly.

 

Apps

 

You have probably by now heard this short name for ‘applications’, used by Apple, Google and Microsoft brought the concept into its Windows Phone and it didn’t disappoint, and nor does it disappoint on Windows 8 either. The apps appear as tiles on your start screen and just one finger (or click) and they magically maximise to the full screen. Obviously for old programmes it now shows them as apps, and they aren’t as good graphically as the Windows 8 apps. Take for example Weather, loading it up in seconds and giving you around 4 pages of hourly forecasts, weather history for rain, snow and sun and a weekly forecast; and it is finished off with a nice professional look that makes your forget for a second that just hours earlier you was searching Google for the weather.

 

There is a Microsoft store; based on the Marketplace from Windows Phone and using the same style and finish as the underrated Zune. From here you can download apps ranging from a newspaper reader, the amazon kindle and games. Speaking of games, just like with the Windows 7 Phone it has adopted ‘Xbox Live’ as a brand to incorporate its games and they do work very well, with some very impressive graphics. It amazed me just how much Windows 8 has transformed my PC into something much more.

 

Tweaks

 

Next is the revolutionary small change that Microsoft think will change the world; the keyboard. The on screen keyboard of the past 8 years has finally been dropped and instead you get a larger version of the Windows 7 Phone keyboard, yes it works well and its very rare I find myself making mistakes (even though my fingers are of the larger scale) but that isn’t what is the big news here. Windows have somehow pulled this surprise out of the bag; the perfect on screen keyboard. Cutting the keyboard in half it positions itself at either side of the screen, so you can now type with your thumbs and they are in perfect reach. At first my reaction was standard, it looks good but I don’t think it is for me; but after 30 minutes of trying it I don’t want to revert back to my old fashioned manual keyboard, never mind the onscreen giant one! It is truly astonishing how something so minor can make such a major change. If I was rating this product, for the ‘keythumboard’ alone I would give it an extra star.

 

You know what? I actually think Microsoft have launched a product that, along with the Windows Phone will successfully be a challenger to stop Apple’s dominance in the market. The fact that it can be used as a tablet or a PC will leave iPad users in awe. My only worry is that the balance appears to be more towards the tablet market than the PC Market and this could be costly. However I do believe that the right pricing strategy will be a major factor in whether this proves to be a stumbling block for the iPad.

 

Well it took you long enough Microsoft but you have finally done it, after years of trying to be dominant in the market and it now looks like you have a real chance of taking Apple down, and I am especially encouraged with the fighting talk, from closing applications to ‘killing’ apps, is there a secret message in there somewhere aimed at Apple? I hope so…

DRFC Season Ticket, to buy or not to buy…

Four Thousand, Two Hundred and Seventy Nine season tickets: That is how many we have sold so far this season as I write this. Yes that’s right the figure actually is 4279. Doncaster Rovers is no longer the small club fighting to be in existence, we are doing well financially. We have a new stadium that is the Keepmoat: which fills up to 15000, and we are about to enter our 4^th season in the Championship. A staggering achievement when one considers it was 50 years before our promotion since we last played at this level. In the past years we have continued to break records: Before we played in the Championship we had never defeated Sheffield Wednesday in a league match, nor had we managed to keep a clean sheet against them. We have played them 4 times before their relegation. We managed won 3 and kept a clean sheet in all 3 of them.  We have recorded famous wins at stadiums such as Fratton Park, St. Mary’s, Pride Park, Brammal Lane, Selhurst Park, the Valley and countless other venues where the sea of Red and White came out victorious.

You would then expect our crowd to be growing year on year, when in fact it has done the exact opposite. It has fallen and continues to do so…

Last season we started quite successfully, however, in the New Year we only managed 3 wins in total and our form was dismal, obviously the crowd started to diminish, with most season ticket holders waiting for the 75^th minute before flocking home disappointed. In the end we survived thanks to Scunthorpe and Sheffield United performing worse than us and fading into league one. The confidence of the Doncaster fans isn’t short of misery at the moment and it is clear why. It is no secret that last season’s performances at home would have discouraged some fans not to renew or even bothering to buy a season ticket.

Then there is every season ticket holder’s favourite topic: The offers. Last season the marketing team went all out to give away tickets, literally they were free against Crystal Palace which was the 2^nd to last home game of the season and we pulled a crowd in of around 14000, this proves the fans are there, but weren’t willing to pay for what was on show. Offers like this and £1 for everyone but an Adult at the Swansea game, and £10 an adult proved the same, we was doing exceptional in this period and we got a full as a house as possible. This obviously made many season ticket holders question the value of a season ticket. Ignoring the fact that they get cup match and away match ticket priority, as well as the same seat every week and countless other offers, because it was possible they might have got to watch the Rovers cheaper had they paid game by game with all the offers on show. It is a likely outcome that some season ticket holders decided not to renew, instead opting to pay game by game this season and hoping that the same offers spring about. We have been told however, that the same offers will not be as frequent, but that hasn’t resulted in ex-season ticket holders flocking back to the ticket office with cash in their hand.

It is clear now, and has been for a few years who our fans are, we have not however made an attempt to snatch the “floaters” (Doncastrians who decide they might ‘go and watch Rovers today, not much else on’) these offers may have been an attempt, but it is clear it has won over just the few rather than the many. As a club we also did one other thing last season, when I say we I actually refer to our club chairman and saviour Sir John Ryan. Although I have nothing against the man and worship him like the next Rovers fan, I have to say that his publicity stunt last year left some people of Doncaster scalding him.  I am talking about his interview with the Doncaster Star in which the newspaper reported:

Fans were also given a reality check by club chairman John Ryan who said: “Just look at how many we have coming through the turnstiles.

“Does that mark us out as a rich club?

“We signed a player in the summer for over a million pounds and we didn’t sell anyone ourselves to fund that deal but we haven’t had the response we hoped for from the town.

“I’m not talking about our regular fans who come all the time and are brilliant.

“But I just wonder whether we have reached our limit when it comes to support.”

When you are trying to get as many through the turnstiles as possible, this was probably not the smartest move to make in this situation. Although this was almost a year ago, comments like this stay in people’s minds, and this is evident when looking at how many season ticket holders are new to the club from last season.  But can you blame the man? Honestly speaking he has poured millions into the club many fans love and he hasn’t got the recognition he deserves from Doncaster and its people.  Anyone in his shoes would of course be frustrated.

So we now reach the one other question that has to be asked when it comes to explaining why our season ticket sales have dropped season on season: The actual price of a season ticket. Many fans have felt the need to question whether the price is cost effective, whether they can afford it, and whether the money can be spent better elsewhere. It seems that although Doncaster Rovers fans are happy to see the team progress year on year, but do not want to see the price rise directly with the club’s progress. Of course we do have our fans that are willing to pay but even that figure is dropping as our season ticket sales are still less than 5000.

We do need to ask ourselves where this leaves us in the future. John Ryan may have gone on record to say that the poor sales will not affect this year’s budget, but what about next year? Will he and the directors once again pour a considerate amount of money into the club to see only a small percentage return? Will this pressure them to consider selling players such as Billy Sharp who has expensive bids coming in for him? The future is unclear for this club, we are happy to say we are no longer a small club going nowhere, but a relatively small club building big for the future, but how long until we are faced with a choice? Get into millions of pounds of debt to stay in this league, or sell our very best players and say goodbye to the Championship? The club and everyone associated want to keep moving forward, but if these sales don’t increase soon we’ll be soon geared into reverse…