The fans

PEOPLE from Bristol are termed as Bristolians but Gashead is the name given to Rovers fans. It was originally coined as a derogatory term by arch-rival Bristol City supporters, but was adopted by the Rovers faithful and now forms part of the distinctive image of the club, along with the blue-and-white quartered shirts.
 
The name stems from the fact that Rovers’ old ground, the Eastville Stadium, was next to a gasworks and the deep smell of the gas often wafted across the pitch during matches. This led to the team becoming known as The Gas and the fans as Gasheads.

Any Gulf investment would not be the first Arab connection to the quirky club. Gasheads chant one of the strangest supporter songs in football ‘Goodnight, Irene’, an American folk song about love and suicide that’s been their anthem for almost 60 years.

Bristol Rovers and the musician known as Leadbelly were both born in the 1880s, but - for a while, at least - they both had different names. The football club was founded, by a 19-year-old schoolteacher, in 1883. At the time they happened to wear black kits and to play on a pitch next to a rugby team called the Arabs, and to mark both facts, they called themselves Black Arabs FC. The musician was born, sometime around 1888, on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana; he was named Huddie William Ledbetter, presumably to mark nothing at all.

Today, of course, Bristol Rovers are as associated with ‘Goodnight, Irene’, Leadbelly’s most famous recording, as any English club with any song. They’ve been singing it since the 1950s, a full decade before ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was heard at Liverpool’s Anfield and 30 years before Manchester City fans began to chant ‘Blue Moon’.

Black Arabs FC became Eastville Rovers in 1884, then Eastville Bristol Rovers in the late 1890s. In 1899, under their current name, they joined the Southern League, just in time for the great era of regional league play before the formation of the national Third Division. They were champions in 1905.