What a wonderful day! The sun shone. The M32/M4/M5 were clear all the way there. Gloucester Services are amazing. You must go there. Aesthetically pleasing, great food, huge selection of local produce for sale (cheese, meats, cakes.....), reasonable prices, and not a franchise in sight. Good parking on the right side of the dual carriageway for getting home (I saw the Melksham Gas van parking up and copied them) Just 5 minutes walk to the ground. Found a great bar, Weavers, with cumfy chairs 'real' ales and cloudy cider! Had a cup of tea at the 'time warp' station with steam puffers regularly leaving. Saw a great second half performance by Rovers; Harrison shook the referee's hand when he was subbed towards the end! Got back to the car in 5 minutes and home in 75 minutes. And the sun still shone. Oh, if only every game was like that!
Funny/strange moment towards the end of the game. Harrison was being subbed and as he made his way off, having scored two goals, he shook the ref's hand with a proper handshake. Hard to see who initiated it and the referee certainly didn't protest. One of their players (no. 2 or 3) seemed to have a word with the referee about it but he just waved him away!
From the radio coverage, Harrison didnt get much change from the ref and a few times Harrison made it known to the ref. I got the impression on how the commentators were talking about this handshake was that Harrison was simply being professional and the bigger person showing no hard feelings as he went off the pitch. Im sure the ref would respect Harrison more in their next meeting!
