Jack Dawe

A lower league football club, just to be a bit more precise for you there. Looking up at us, a: 21st century football club, with all that that entails. So you'll be quite happy where you are with your standing and terraces and funny stands full of "character" and racism and all that 70s/80s proper football; you'll not be after anything more/new/different, like a terrible, soulless new all-seater ground etc? If you lot had chosen to eschew all the modernisation/sh1te we've got, to remain primarily a football club, then you'd have one on us there. But you haven't chosen this. You have no choice. You haven't got what we've got - ie Championship football, for one - and you are not what we are, and are always looking up at us, because you lot are sh1te. And you know it.

Our crowds and attendances are "superior." Your support is woeful. Our results are woeful, yours are "superior." See you the season after next. In the Championship.

He's that relevant? Blimey. In my eyes, their coach is innocuous.

It's called "boob cricket" over there. He's part of the Rovers "leadership group" and he's tampering with her, er, balls, I think? Funny lot, them Fewers.

Are we supposed to believe that in L1 today - leaving aside the bigger clubs like Wigan and Plymouth, with their thousands of followers - are we to believe that Blackpool took more to Milton Keynes, Northampton more to Fleetwood, AFC Wimbledon more to Shrewsbury, and diddly Rotherham more to Southend than Rovers took to Peterborough? This is madness! Sorcery!

We don't need them to do that. We're quite capable of doing that for ourselves. All, er, by ourselves.

400 to Peterborough is jolly good - in League One. Well done the Few! In the Championship, it's fewer than Burton's average away following. Burton being - 24/24 in the Championship - bottom and the fewest for away support. Phew!

3,034 Plymouth at Charlton (a 240 mile journey). 400 Few at Posh (a 174 mile journey). That's this weekend's L1 West Country numbers....

How timely to see the cuckoo on these pages! The first this spring. The common cuckoo is a crafty parasite, laying it's eggs in another bird's nest, then the hatched little pirate eases the host bird's team out of the nest, and before you know it, it's running around everywhere calling "we want another nest!" The cuckoo is a lying, sneaky little ****er and is traditionally associated with cocks.

We're going forward as a team, Major! This weekend!

They can do lower than that: two seasons between 87 and 92 where Cardiff averaged - averaged - below 3000, in other words, a 4 digit average with the first digit being "2." Sub 3,000! And another where they got above 3000 by about a bus load every home game. Cardiff City fans are proper deserters.

The thing with all this "my dad's bigger than your dad" support comparisons and the entire Bristol "rivalry" is that they - The Few - have got a target and something to aim at/match/be better/get/take more than, something to drive them on (they're going to be seriously unhappy if Man City do not give them a 7,801, minimum, allocation, next time Citeh have the privilege/pleasure of a visit from those tossers); but what have we got? What and whom are we aiming at/trying to match? Who is driving us on, on and off the pitch? Let me get us started: next time we play Walsall/Shrewsbury/Notts County/a L2 playoff final at Wembley, let's get organised and make sure we take more than The Few. I'm in. What about you?

Graham: calm down. It's Friday.

During the era of the maximum wage.

They have not finished in the top half of England's second tier since those sepia-tinted days of jumpers-for-goalposts, since 1960. If we finish 7th or higher this season, that will be a higher finish - another one - in the 92 than they have ever finished, in their entire miserable history.

Almost. Duncan Edwards didn't play that day. But anyway, a fine effort from "the" Rovers, as Man Utd won the league that season.

This is why their "relentless in the pursuit of excellence" - or, as they put it: "we're cumming for you" - thing, is taking a while longer than many of the Few first hoped

Because they are very, very unhappy, and very, very upset. Disturbed, even. They are having to work harder and harder, and devote more time to, and go to greater and greater lengths, to maintain the unshakeable "truth" in their tiny little Banjo island minds, that Bristol "Shitty" are hated by every other club, have no atmosphere, no away support, and (etc, etc. You know the rest), as the national media love-in with all things Bristol City continues, and the evidence to the contrary of their gaslogic won't go away, and stacks up and gets ever more difficult to refute and to contest. It must be exhausting for them.

944 Plymouth at Milton Keynes yesterday, a journey of 230 miles for them. Just saying....

Not seeing a lot of Rovers colours out and about, but I am seeing more Man City colours! Funny, that. Kid walking along the pavement by Blaise car park with his MCFC scarf yesterday. Can't for the life of me think why.......

We beat 15 in 78/79. And 20 in 1906/7! Our "achievements" are modest, but it'll take Rovers a while to match them. Another gaping "gap" between us.

Cloud 9. Well, 8 and a half (depends on the draw)

I don't agree with that, Kid. I think that for a L1 game, that's pretty normal. I think, for them, that's normal, ok. Not great, not sh1t, just normal. Unremarkable. For Rovers, after three successive years of winning and improving their league standing within the pyramid (after a humbling and humiliating low in the Banana league) and a gathering "we're coming for you" head of steam groupthink feverish enthusiasm, with some good and sometimes very good away turnouts they very selectively (and understandably) highlighted and trumpeted, and used to compare with ours (minus all relevant and crucial context), things over there are likely going to level out a bit now, as the exciting novelty and new-grounds-not-visited-for-a-generation giddy excitement of - for them - the wonder that is League One, wears off a tad. Along with the wins. And the "coming for you." Their numbers, inevitably, will go back to something more "normal," for them, back to the levels their away support was at when they weren't very selectively comparing their away numbers with ours because there were few if any that - viewed without context (ie, Wolves, number of times played there respectively/novelty value/ground to be ticked off, league game v knockout cup tie, respective record at said bloody ground, price of tickets, history of fans being kicked to sh1t on the ground between rival firms, or not, etc etc, as you already know) - showed them in a good light compared to us. In the time of Steve Lansdown, we have had more years of second tier football than they have had third tier football (to get a similar level of "buzz" and enthusiasm to them finishing top half in L1 last season, we'd have to reach another Championship play-off final or something). With another season of midtable frustration/mediocrity and poor away results for them in an increasingly familiar and decreasingly novel standard of football, it will be no surprise if - Blackburn away aside, say (whom, like Wolves, they haven't visited for 25 years) - they see, like Saturday, a "normalising" of this mythologised support. Interestingly, they tweeted the numbers last Tues at Shrewsbury, but not Saturday at Rochdale. Selective tweeting! I can remember the days when they struggled to fill the one third of the old Open End for Bristol derbies - which changed when they went about 4 years and 10 derby games unbeaten. Funny that.

I would suggest "status anxiety" as egghead Alain de Botton puts it, be added to your list. He wrote a book about it. He writes about a universal anxiety about what others think about us (big club/tinpot), about whether we are judged a success (Championship, played at top level) or a failure (L1, played in part-time banana league). He says we care what others think about us ("we took 40k to Wembley. No, really! We did!") We all have "status anxiety," but Rovers have it so bad.

Bristol to Shrewsbury: 128 miles. Rovers 13th, 6 wins. Meanwhile, Plymouth (bottom of the table, 1 win): 415 fans at Blackburn (Plymouth to Blackburn: 305 miles). "But, but....Plymuff haven't played Blackburn since 1992" yes, the same context as us and them v Wolves......