Atyeo Said It..

Have a good one Wize and all other contributors on here.

Up The City !

 

Good enough for me too Wiz, a Bristol City legend who was great on & off the pitch, what he stated is absolutely true, there IS an aura around Ashton Gate & that's what's kept me going there for over 50 years, it just needs the spark to light the fire.

 

Well Wiz, one man did deliever us to the promised land once, my 606 namesake the great Alan Dicks, the spark we are looking for may already be with us, namely Derek Mcinnes, "D" may be our favorite letter, first we had Dicks, now we have Derek, so lets all get behind him, you never know, one day.

Happy New Year To All 606rs.

 

Big John was absolutely spot on with that comment. I assume he said it during his career so that is at least 45 years ago. I think the City chairman throughout his 15 seasons, Harry Dolman always believed it too.

So why has no-one ever grabbed City kicking and screaming into the top echelon?

There are lots of reasons but here are some thoughts on them.

Successive boards have stuffed plenty of money in the wash basin plughole to keep us afloat. But none have ever gone the extra 10% to turn survival into continuing success. Even the extra amounts that SL has put in in the last few years have been wasted by…

Inept managers who did not have any fire in their bellies to get 100% out of everybody for 100% of the time.

Over the years, many Board members have been content to be “A big fish in the little pond called Division Three “.

Even in the glory days from 1976 until 1980, no real money was invested in the future of the team – apart from Hunter, Garland, Royle and Cormack, it was a dismal list of second raters who were signed. Published attendances were always at least 15% less than actual so where did all that money go?

So over the last 50 years, teams representing large “villages” (tongue in cheek remark to remind everyone that BRISTOL is the SIXTH biggest CITY in ENGLAND) have spent many more seasons in the top flight than our miserable FOUR years!

Ipswich, Southampton, Leicester C, Nottingham F, Stoke, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Derby, Portsmouth, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Norwich, Swansea, Burnley, Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan. Even bloody Oxford managed three years there! Can anyone add anymore?

And a really cheeky one – the population of the City of Newcastle is some 200,000 LESS than Bristol.

IT’S ABOUT TIME THAT WE JOINED THIS PREMIERSHIP THAT EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT BUT NO-ONE IN BRISTOL HAS EVER SEEN. WHAT ABOUT IT SL AND DMc?

 

PS. The only reason many of the listed clubs get bigger gates than City is because of our abject lack of any sustained success over more than 50 years. Perhaps since 1920.

 

Add in the smallish London suburbs of Sheppard Bush (QPR), Greenwich (Charlton) Isle Of Dogs/Bermondsey (Millwall) and Wimbledon....! Oh and Oldham !

 

Swindon?

 

Barnsley, Hull, Blackpool recently.

 

Bradford, Reading

 

To reach the greatest heights you need to provide that little bit of magic which excites the latent supporters and creates the big buzz. I was fortunate to be stationed near Ipswich for my National Service and managed to watch a few games managed by the man whose tactics completely changed the face of world football, Alf Ramsay. I didn't entirely understand the strange tactics at the time, but the team's success rate was phenomenal. A little town out in the sticks like Ipswich has maintained the magic, and the crowds for home matches at both Ipswich and Norwich still attract 50% higher gates than AG today fifty years on. Other small clubs have been up and down and sunk into relative oblivion. I am afraid City come into this category. Under Dicks the first division was achieved, but at what cost? The football on display was unfortunately the most boring spectacle imaginable. Possession at all costs, eminently forgetable and it drove the support away. I'm still optimistic that our great city will achieve a team which challenges the top clubs in the Premiership, but we do need a magician to pull the magic out of the hat. Alf Ramsay would have never been happy to just be there. He was a winner!

 

I wish you all you wish for yourself Wiz, but you know how I feel that Bristol will achieve the magic......

Have great New Year and enjoy the great game

 

By the way Wiz. I climbed over the fence and joined the crowd cheering Big John on that magical day!!

 

Hello Sapphire. May I please ask which day it was. As I too climbed the fencing many times; promotions in 1955 and 1965 and his last games
I was there on his first day versus Newport County, countless in between for City and England and his last against Ipswich when Danny Bartley’s corner may or may not have brushed his eyebrow on the way in. But if it did not, then Danny would never have had the temerity to claim it from Big John.
Or was it the Testimonial against Leeds?

I like all my fellow supporters adored him throughout his career, his honesty when he had had a poor game and his humility when he was awesome. In those days we travelled on trains to and from away matches with the team so totally different from today.

The left footed drive at Villa in 1957, thundering one from thirty yards past Harry Gregg versus Doncaster and so many poached from inside the 6 yard box. Opposition fans and teams were scared of what he was capable of doing to their team. I am was very privileged to have seen so many games with him as the star.

 

For me it was the day the Reds won promotion to the First Division. under AD. Looking up at Big John, CG.....

 

After every home game, I pass a photograph of Big John Atyeo under the Dolman Stand & never ever fail to stop & look at it, always sends a tingle down my spine, great, great man.

 

Ciderabroad
Much of what you say is true
However
"Ipswich, Southampton, Leicester C, Nottingham F, Stoke, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Derby, Portsmouth, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Norwich, Swansea, Burnley, Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan. Even bloody Oxford managed three years there! Can anyone add anymore? "
In the case of Nottingham, Stoke, Sunderland, Blackburn, Wigan Leicester etc, those towns are right in the middle of huge areas of football hotbeds. The Lancashire clubs are close neighbours to Liverpool and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield are 30 miles away. Middlesborough and Sunderland are near enough to Newcastle to be one area. They are all places that have known success. Forest , for instance, have won major European trophies.

So the problem is that geographically Bristol is isolated and so doesn't have the football community of those other areas. In the same way as this is seen as a huge catchment area it is also a hinderance. The one thing that can break that cycle of circumstance is sustained success, in the same way it did for Leeds back in the 60s.

Yes it needs someone to light the firework. It also need someone to deliver more gunpowder too, and it may be that SL has used up his quota.
It needs a lot of gunpowder these days, because foreign investors have arrived and the premium has gone up (e.g check out Leicester's accounts).

 

I tried to avoid saying this, but we will only achieve what Bright red suggests if we are all singing from the same hymn sheet