Steve Evans & The Rotherham Fans

I've just read this brilliant article about Steve Evans joining Rotherham as manager and the dissatisfaction of the Rotherham fans.

I remember after Parky left - the feeling of what if someone like Gary Megson or Brian Laws - a journeyman, non-CHarlton manager go the job. I t would certainly have made things less enjoyable.

It's well worth a read and the website - The Two Unfortunates - looks decent too.



Yesterday, Steve Evans took over as manager at Rotherham United. Lifelong Millers’ fan David Rawson here provides his reaction.

It’s probably three-quarters of a mile, if that. It just feels further.

The red paint on the wooden gates at the back of Millmoor’s Tivoli End has faded a little now. In places, it’s flaked off, exposing grey undercoat and the wood beneath. The same goes for the narrow doors, behind which the old turnstiles stand silent. There’s a silence as you walk across the forecourt towards the main road, the quietness of abandonment, of a place out of time, condemned to the past.

Turn right, walk for a minute. The road takes on a shallow slope here towards the natural basin formed by the river Don’s flow over the centuries. And at the bottom of that slope you can see it, a thing of elegant curves and glass, almost beautiful, slightly out of place. A glance over the shoulder reveals a last glimpse of asbestos roofs and floodlight pylons, sentries guarding a ceremony taking place elsewhere. Then a deep breath and a walk down the hill, towards the imminent future.

The walk is not unburdened. There is a weight: of fragments of memory and shared experience, of the individual hopes and fears of thousands of people, yielded up to make something crucial of something fundamentally unimportant. There is a weight: of soaring joys, asphyxiating lows, of chances missed, opportunities all-too-infrequently seized. There is a weight: of identity, that indefinable quality that drew together individuals over the years to the place a few hundred yards down the road, and an almost incalculable distance away.

It’s inherent in supporting a football team that you impress the qualities that you value onto the club you follow. The special magic of football is that it allows for the embodiment of every noble virtue (it’s rare for supporters to overlay ignoble qualities onto their club, though football easily encompasses these, too), creating a shared sense of collective self as strongly understood as it is impossible to reduce to simple definition.

But let’s try. Standing in the shadows of the home end at Millmoor, straining to hear the echoes of a century’s cheers and cries, you can sense something of it.

We’ve never been flash or brash – (actually, we have, twice – once when we appointed Tommy Docherty as manager and promptly got relegated and once when Anton Johnson oversaw an extravagant lifestyle that club – and, it turned out, he – could ill afford and we nearly ceased to exist). Generally, any successes have been earned by honest hard work and graft, by taking cast off, under-rated or local players, improving them and making them greater as a team than the sum of their collective parts. We’ve accepted our place as a club for whom success is a welcome stranger rather than a familiar house guest.

At our best, we’re the team that’s made the most of what we’ve got. Millmoor was never the Nou Camp, but it could gleam in the sunlight of the first fixture of the season and its pitch could often stand comparison with any in the country. Players would arrive from reserve teams and find the form of their careers. Youth team players would come into the side and prosper, before leaving for better careers elsewhere.

At our worst, we’ve overreached and fallen flat. Relegation from the Championship with one of the smallest wage budgets ever seen in that league, nearly ruined us and cost us our ground and much of our dignity and respect. But we battled through the deduction of 27 points in two seasons, the loss of our manager and the entire coaching staff just as we seemed to be on the brink of something tangible and overcame the crippling disappointment of a play-off final defeat, to be in the promotion hunt going into the final straight of last season.

And then everything changed.

Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe what we saw in the wake of a complete capitulation against Chesterfield (‘Live on Sky Sports!’) was the first glimpse of what we’d become. Ronnie Moore, his face taut with despair and frustration, lashed out at his players and was dismissed. Andy Liddell (hailed by the chairman, Tony Stewart, for his intelligence, his hard work, his commitment) took over temporarily, overseeing no real improvement, before being dismissed from the club on Andy Scott’s appointment.

Scott, praised by Stewart for his hard work, his energy and his intelligence, oversaw a complete overhaul of the back-room staff, with people who’d been with – and stuck with – the club through its financial woes, culled almost overnight and replaced by an array of ‘player development officers’ and other curiously corporate sounding names.

Amid much talk of competitive wage budgets and ambition, Scott turned over a vast number of players over the summer and during the season using the loan system, but delivered only mid table form. Despite the chairman’s disbelief at the “illogic” of the situation, Scott was dismissed, almost a year after Moore’s departure.

The hunt for a new manager began again. The names linked to the job were credible, impressive even. Lee Clark was spotted in the stand at Don Valley. So was Brian Laws. Robins applied for his old job. Phil Brown threw his hat in the ring. Rumours linked Sean O’Driscoll and even Mick McCarthy. The chairman spoke of the quality of the applicants and how the draw of the new stadium had yielded some surprising names.

And at the fringes of the betting, in surprisingly persistent rumours, the name of Steve Evans.

At first, the link seemed to arise from nothing more than a series of interviews in which Evans was noticeably positive about the club (and especially its chairman). But then the local press started picking up the story and, just before the Easter weekend, respected local journalist Les Payne told us that his understanding was that Evans was Tony Stewart’s favoured candidate. On Monday morning, it was confirmed.

Hollowness. A strange feeling, empty of strong emotion, but profound nonetheless. The clothes of expected outrage (‘the man’s a convicted criminal’, ‘he’s graceless, lacking in dignity, not our sort of man, surely’) didn’t quite fit.

The dislocated feeling wasn’t, it turned out, a reaction to Evans, as such, but something wider, deeper, less easily identifiable. It was this: my club had become the sort of club that would appoint a man like Evans to be its manager. Before now, the idea of it was just unthinkable, literally unbelievable. Whatever his qualities as a football manager, the club that lived within the perimeters of Millmoor, would not have entertained the appointment. I knew that club. I knew what it stood for.

This club was different. This club demanded success. This club boasted of the resources it would throw behind the new man, as if the millions of pounds of written off debt were no longer a matter of concern. This club would overlook everything about Evans’ past except the record of lower league success. This club repented of nothing, regretted still less. This club was a more ruthless, unforgiving place, that spoke in terms of delivery and implementation, that had just signed its third three year managerial contract in two years.

In that moment, I thought again of the old gates through which you exited Millmoor. In my imaginings before, I’d assumed it was me walking away from the old ground, out and away towards the future.

But this time, it felt different.

I suddenly realised that I’d had it wrong, that the club that lived in that old stadium had turned its back on me. That club, and all that it represented, was dead and receding into the past.

I was to be left to stumble towards a future just down the road, but suddenly without any assurance of what I might find when I got there. And part of me wonders whether I should move at all, or stand still in the shadow cast by that empty, abandoned stand and remember. Part of me wonders whether that even that short distance from here to there is ultimately bridgeable.

 

Must admit, went to Millmoor once - what a tip ! - By far the worst ground i've ever been to - and I've been to Boundary Park !

 

What a wonderful piece of writing - thanks for posting, Kish.

 

That took up my whole lunch break . I'd be distraught if Steve Evans managed my club - what an absolute [insert word].

 

An excellent thought provoking piece of prose. I would like to think that we as Charlton supporters would have questioned in the same way had the new owners appointed a Steve Evans type.

I still feel cold every time someone mentions a new glass and steel multi purpose arena at the end of Blackwall Lane replacing the updated, cared for and much sung about piece of priceless real estate in Floyd Road.

Does the Etihad have the same level of attachment that Main Road used to attract, has the move to the Emirates been worth the trophyless heartbreak endured by Gooners who have watched key players sold to keep up payments on the mortgage? One expects no feeling of loss by wall fans for the old den but moving from ghetto to another must have made them feel at home.

Whilst all houses can feel like home after a suitable elapsing of time, the attachment of the Charlton fans to the Valley must be greater than most other clubs after having regained what we had lost in the 80's.

The emotion attached to the purity of old fashioned football evoked in the Rotherham article by the way the author relates to Millmoor must resonate with all addicks in what we demand of the club in terms of honesty integrity and loyalty. So far we have no reason to dispute these attributes in our current owners and must laud them for what they have achieved to date, however they are commercial as well as football people and we must watch and support with continued vigilance to ensure that the commercial imperative goes hand in hand with the values that we hold dear.

 

I'm unaware of the ins and outs of the decision to leave Millmoor, but it must be heartbreaking for Rotherham fans to know that their real home is still there whilst they've been playing at the terrible Don Valley Stadium, although they are soon to move into a new purpose-built ground. At least in Arsenal or Man City's case they knew that their home was too small and too old, and that it was in the club's best interest to move to a new home.

As for Charlton, we've had this discussion before but The Valley IS Charlton. I never went through the exile years but I don't think I could stomach leaving.

 

Excellent piece. Thanks for posting. A number of parallels with Charlton and very definitely a "there but for the grace of God" scenario. I have nothing much against Steve Evans, but I do understand how the writer feels. There have been a number of times this season when I have nearly burst into a chorus of "we've got our Charlton back", not just because of our results and our position but because of CP and what he brings. He is still a fledgling manager, a little tactically naive and learning. But he has Charlton in his soul and understands the past and our history. This club now "feels right" in a way that it has not done for a long time. We arrived early at the Valley on Monday - overestimated the holiday traffic and went for a walk in the rain. We went into the east stand at the Jimmy Seed end which I have not done for yonks. As you come through the turnstiules there is an unusual vioew of the Valley. You are effectively at the top of the old East Terrace. You can see over the top of the East stand to the West and Norths and you have the revamped Jimmy Seed below you with the relatively new garden of remembrance, albeit strategically obscured by a burger van! It is a very poignant place to stand. You are on the oldest and most revered part of the old ground with the new stadium beneath and in front of you. It is a place to at once recall the bad times and look forward to the good. Even this time 18 months ago we were a bum appointment away from oblivion in my view. So we should hold this dear and thank our lucky stars.

 

I heard Evans talking in a radio interview - he kept mentioning 'The Rotherham Project' or just 'The Project' and I thought 'you guys are in real trouble...'

 

Lovely replies Jimbob and SVC...

It seems like more of a Vanity Project Tewks.

I honestly think I would prefer to lose every game at The Valley 3-1 with Chris Powell in charge than finish 14th with Micky Adams.

 

Yes indeed, just got a chance to read them properly. Didn't know about the Garden of Remembrance, must look next time I'm down.

Captain B, the exile years were ghastly. Despite the success that Lennie Lawrence brought us, all the time, you felt "This should be happening at The Valley". And then, thankfully, it did.

 

That was indeed a great read. A great deal of artistic ability in who-ever wrote it.

I'm glad that the closest I've ever come to feeling like Charlton are no longer 'our Charlton' was for the 3 or 4 years under Pardew and Parky. Yet even then, the collective sense of hope, sadness and anger amongst the fans around me in the Covered End made me realise that, for the time-being at least, WE were the heart and soul of CAFC, and would remain so. With that said, I'm glad that we now have a manager who we can all identify with and who is Charlton 'through and through'. We also have a squad to be immensely proud of, and whilst I get the feeling that there are many players who don't necessarily feel much love or affection for the club itself, there are a number of players well on their way to being cult hero's (I'm looking at you Mr Kermorgant).

So, even if its falling on dead ears, I'd very much like to say a huge thank you to our current board, who have come in, steadied the financial side of things, but most importantly brought back a real 'Charlton-feel' about the place (despite a number of them having had no prior affiliation with the club).

 

Good post, WWOCB, and I agree with all of it. In fact it was during the pardew/Parky era that fans would sing "We Want Our Charlton Back". Maybe it's time to change your moniker?

 

Haha yeah FHB that was the reasoning behind the abbreviation to just the letters, though I can't think of anything positive, weWONourcharltonback perhaps but that doesn't have a good ring to it

 

Winning With Our Charlton Boys may have a ring to it?

 

My family have had dealings with Steve Evans, HE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED!

The rumour in Crawley is that something is about to hit the fan at Crawley FC and that Steve Evans didn't want to be there when it does.

 

Really? That would be delicious!

Although does this imply he is or isn't implicated?

 

SE likes to get involved in EVERYTHING at Clubs he manages

 

Excellent - I do like watching characters like him from afar within barge pole distance...

 

For me Evans is in their with warnock in the detesting stakes....just less succesful