Part six IS HERE.

THE FIRST DAY OF A BRAND NEW YEAR is all about brand new starts. About leaving the mistakes of the past behind, about shedding off the baggage of the previous years, about looking out from the precipice toward the 12 months ahead.

For some of us it’s also about waking up with an amalgamated taste in the mouth of approximately 1,000 tab-ends and 8 litres of lager, and about hitherto blacked-out snippets of events of the previous nights’ revellry recalling themselves to memory, as unwelcomed as a stiletto heel at a testicle party.

There was to be no such nonsense for the professional ranks of the Rovers playing squad however. Marked on the calendar for all of a Rovers persuasion for January 1 2007 was a home fixture against Huddersfield, the first match in the Keepmoat Stadium, the first Rovers home league game with a five-figure gate since the Zodiac Killer decided to start joshing around with the residents of Northern California to idle away a bit of spare time and petrol. All in all, pretty landmark stuff.

As starts to a New Year go, chumping Huddersfield by three goals to nil, in a brand new stadium, in front of a 14,500 gate has to rank somewhere in between the 1995 discovery of Fred West hung in his prison cell and the 1958 birth of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

More than likely it’s well above the first ever mobile telephone call being made in Great Britain, between (of all people) Ernie Wise, and some business squire from Vodafone on 1 January 1985 - a 5 minute conflab that featured more crackling than a Jamaican 7.

Mark McCammon, Paul Heffernan and Jonathan Forte brought the Terriers to heel and upon the full-time whistle that day there appeared to be endless possibilities mapping themselves out in front of the fans. Fresh and opulent surroundings, massive crowds, an unsure start under Sean O’Driscoll transformed by a surging recent run of form, a Chairman on board at the club not afraid to put his money where his mouth is? Yes-fuckin-please.

Putting aside a regrettable 4-0 home defeat in the 3rd round of the FA Cup to Bolton Wanderers Reserves (you couldn’t help but think this would never have happened in front of a close-to-the-pitch and hostile full house at Belle Vue - would it, Aston Villa?), Rovers continued at full-tilt pace in competitions which we actually had a chance of achieving something in.

Dave Penney made his first visit to the Keepmoat with his new charges, Darlington, in the Northern Area Semi-Final of the Football League Trophy. While Rovers summarily cruised through to the Northern final inside of 90 minutes, the most important event of the evening was the three sides of the ground containing Rovers fans rising as one to champion our former leader with a loud, sustained and thoroughly deserved crescendo of “One Dave Penney” - comprehensively drowning out my own attempts of

Is ‘ere! Is there! Is every-fuckin-where! Dave Penney, Dave Penney!

Anyway - back to League One, and goals from Jason Price and Brian Stock gave Rovers a 2-0 win at Gillingham as the play-off charge began to gather some serious momentum. League leaders and all-round risible twats Scunthorpe United were next up at the Keepmoat replete with their “Big-Day-Out ballons” and acquired a first-half 2-0 lead, mainly on account of the first in what would become a series of atrocious displays of long range shot-stoppery by Ben “Doctor couldn’t explain it but I just stopped growing at 12 years old” Smith.

First Graeme Lee and then Jason Price hauled Rovers back into the match in the second half with two goals in as many minutes, which had most of the crowd of over 12,000 almost ready to explode. Had Jon Forte’s shot flew into the net instead of crashing against the crossbar shortly thereafter in all likelihood the roof would have come off the Keepmoat in a similar fashion to the roof of the by-now-abandoned Rovers Return bar next to our old stomping ground at Belle Vue - blowing into some unsuspecting Fiat Punto on Bawtry Road, probably.

It ended up two apiece, but what an awesome game. Fucking fantasic, even.

Better was to follow as our old chums from Rotherham were permitted collective day release to travel to the Keepmoat, having shed their two best players to Watford a week or so earlier for a total consideration of a million quid - any chance of ponying up to some of the debtors you ripped off, lads? One beating with a shitty stick later and they were off back down the M18 to their candle-lit hovels, left to ponder their impending and richly deserved relegation into the basement division.

Last but not least in a busy January, and immediately preceding the utterance of number 10 in “World’s most unlikely comments about football and that …” came the feast of goals that was the Norther Area Final 1st Leg of the FLT, away at Crewe. Oooh - we’re so close to the Millenium Stadium ! Read about the game (and the unlikely comment !) HERE.

Part five IS HERE.

FOR AS FAR BACK AS I CAN REMEMBER regularly tipping up at the football on a Saturday afternoon, Belle Vue has been a comfortable enclave, as familiar as a well-worn (and well-chewed, slightly smelly) old slipper. A second home where I’ve seen a free-scoring, free-wheeling and sometimes indeed drug-dealing array of players of various endearing limitations chuffing up and down the length of the hallowed turf of Belle Vue.

Think of Belle Vue and you think of crumbling terraces, you think of the smell of fried onions on hot dogs of ill-repute, the rickety intimacy of the wooden Main Stand. You think of avuncular old Ken Avis, so many years the voice of Saturday afternoons over the tannoy, of the unforgiving, puddle-ridden terrain of the Rovers car park.

Personal to me, I remember Darren Moore single-handedly keeping the team in the Football League the season prior to our eventual demise into the Conference. I remember being awe-struck with excitement over the massive crowd of 6,626 for what turned out to be a 1-4 home reverse in the FA Cup against Huddersfield - the biggest Rovers crowd I’d been amongst by far at the time. I remember the excitement as people milled around outside on the car park hours before the Conference play-off final at Stoke, a game that turned out to be the beginning of the redemption of this football club.

So many memories from just 12 (largely unsuccessful, in relative terms) regular seasons of attending games. As it turned out, both the first and the last games I saw at Belle Vue were victories by a single goal to nil and I suppose that there’s a certain symmetrical completeness to be taken from that. Nottingham Forest were the final visitors to Belle Vue on December 23 2006, a fixture on paper providing a fitting backdrop to the main event of farewell to the old stadium from a cast of thousands of regular punters and occassional well-wishers.

The build-up to the final match could not have gone much better. Successive away wins at Brentford (4-0) and Northampton (2-0) were followed by progress to the 3rd Round of the FA Cup after a 2-0 defeat of Mansfield, ensuring a bouyant and positive atmosphere prevailed in what had suddenly turned, after a turgid couple of months under O’Driscoll’s tenure, into a vague threat of actual play-off assault.

The right result, the only result that there could be, ensued on the day, and I will always be grateful for that. That the winning goal, from Rovers’ on loan defender Theo Streete, was as bizarre and comical a strike as you could hope to see (Theo, mooning up just past the half way line on the right hand touchline in front of the Pop, attempting to sling a diagonal ball into the box, yet slicing across the ball horrendously. The ball suddenly arcing towards goal - Forest goalkeeper re-positioning himself to field an unexpected catch makes a complete twatbasket of it, and the ball skids off him and into the net, framed by a thousand Forest fans swinging their fists at the rank absurdity of what just unfolded) was a fitting finale for the Old Girl, who had seen it all spanning the two decades of it’s life. Sublime to ridiculous. I’d like to think the Gods of Rovers past were shining down on us that day.

For all the need to progress facilities to match ambitions, for all the desire to more and more punters in bigger and better stadiums, as the rank and file left Belle Vue for the last time that evening in December, we surely all left a little bit of Doncaster Rovers behind, on those terraces upon which we stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with our brethren. Left behind acquaintences whom we might never see again, with whom we’d shared a joke, or crossed word, and certainly left behind a bygone experience of what watching football used to be.

The lure of opulent new surroundings and 15,000 crowds all too quickly drew us towards gazing ahead to 2007. A new start, in a new ground, under a new manager. Time waits for no man, eh?