Bygones: Recalling the darkest days in Doncaster Rovers' history

Protest: Doncaster Rovers and Brighton fans join together to demonstrate against Ken Richardson.

PALLBEARERS, pitch invasions, death threats, pandemonium '“ and above all, the putrid stench of a once-proud club being contaminated by the actions of its reviled owner.

Reach for the history books and fans of Yorkshire’s football clubs can all point to tough times in their existence at sporadic junctures. But no-one has suffered such a desperate and debased time of it as followers of Doncaster Rovers did in 1997-98, some two decades ago.

It was a season in which relegation out of the Football League was truly only part of the story; a mere by-product of the anarchy and chaos off the pitch with the crazy events of that infamous campaign captured in a Channel Five documentary entitled: ‘They Think It Is All Rovers.’

But the statistics are still worthy of examination, if only for their incredulous nature.

Doncaster Rovers FC benefactor Ken Richardson.

Rovers, officially ‘managed’ by four bosses in that car-crash of a campaign, recorded just four wins in their 46 league games in the Third Division and ended the season 15 points adrift of safety in a season of staggering ineptitude.

They were not just stuck at the bottom of the league, they were welded to it. All season.

Along the way, Doncaster managed a mere 30 goals and conceded a colossal 113, with that haul incorporating one 8-0 defeat, a 7-1 drubbing, a 5-0 thrashing and two 5-1 reverses. All told, Rovers conceded three goals or more in 20 of their league fixtures.

It took them 21 matches at the start of the season to register their first league victory and in total, they lost 34 games, a Football League record.

Mark Weaver was Ken Richardson's sidekick and mouthpiece.

The final loss arrived on May 2, 1998, in a 1-0 defeat to Colchester – Rovers’ 17th home league defeat in that atrocious campaign – with many among that 3,572 crowd harbouring genuine fears that the club would not just descend into the non-league wilderness, but cease to exist.

That funereal mood in what was the bleakest of seasons was aptly reflected by a group of Rovers fans who arrived at the ground in a mock-funeral cortege from the nearby Park Hotel.

Flowers were laid behind the Town End, while a bugler played The Last Post. Tears were shed by many supporters, before the hurt turned into recriminations towards the club’s absent ‘benefactor’ in Ken Richardson and his similarly despised general manager, Mark Weaver – who bore the brunt before leaving the stadium early after initially pledging not to attend.

It was a bitter end to a bitter season and it was incredible to think that just a decade later, Rovers would finish the 2007-08 season with promotion back to the second tier for the first time in almost half-a-century.

For those loyal Rovers diehards present at Wembley in May, 2008, and who also attended on that rather more painful Spring afternoon just under 10 years earlier, it was the ultimate cathartic moment.

Somewhere, just somewhere amid those post-match celebrations, defiant chants of: ‘Are you watching, Richardson’ may have been detected among Rovers fans with long memories.

For wholly contrasting reasons, 1997-98 was memorable; nay infamous. In truth, it was a season which always carried hazard warning lights.