Welcome to Roger’s Rovers Advent Calendar - read the full story behind it and add your commentsHERE.
Day: 4/30
Season: 2020/21
Fixture:Rovers 0-1 Brentford (12/3/21)
Highlights
Why Chosen
Football is nothing without fans. The Covid season of 2020/21 proved this, so it's tough to pick out a match, but this was harder than any. A sickener. The season was a tough watch as Rovers' middling performances week to week meant they spent most of the campaign hovering just above or just below midtable. But this in particular feels like the day Bradley Dack’s career ended. Sure he’d return and showed tremendous determination in doing so, but a second ACL injury was brutal to watch, particularly so soon after his first ACL injury in December 2019 and especially given the innocuous nature of the challenge. Similarly, that the injury was caused by former team mate and fans favourite David Raya only made the viewing more uncomfortable.
Aftermath
Dack has made just 19 starts in the nearly four years since the incident. Rovers, Sunderland and Gillingham fans have been most used to him on the treatment table. As for Brentford and Raya, neither have looked back with both well established in the top half of the Premier League, albeit with Raya at Arsenal. A late flurry of goals and wins saw Rovers avoid any real danger, the lost season of Covid holds little memory for most Rovers fans.
Honourable Mentions:
Coventry 0-4 Rovers (24/10/20) – Rovers won away at Coventry?!! Well at St Andrew's anyway.
Rovers 5-2 Huddersfield (24/04/21) – Armstrong hat-trick and the Harvey Elliott Show. Pity we never got to see him in the flesh.
Preston 0-3 Rovers (24/11/20) – Tyrhys Dolan somersaults his way into Rovers hearts as North End humbled at Deepdale.