Almost exactly thirty years ago my parents had a house fire, they were out and had left some lights on for when they got back. The cat jumped onto a table, her tail flicked under a lampshade and she jumped down taking the light with her setting fire to an armchair.

`There was £60k of fire and smoke damage – £150k in today’s money – more than one person said that they should cheer themselves up by thinking about the shopping spree they would be able to go on when the insurance money came. 

This wasn’t a comfort, most of what needed to be replaced was boring everyday items, the insurance only paid the non-sentimental value of anything with they really cared about. Plus, of course, their house had burnt down. 

The biggest trauma was returning to the house; rooms were blackened with smoke, their stuff was thrown into the garden, the police initially thought it was a burglary, but it turned out that was just down to how messy my sister’s room was. When they tried to clean anything – an act of regaining some control – they were quickly consumed by how much of it there was, even if they could remove the soot, they couldn’t remove the smell. 

Nowadays it would have been recognised as PTSD, for years they were paranoid about lamps being on, long after the cat – who’d bolted out of the cat flap – had gone.

I think I was suffering a very mild PTSD in the run up to the Bristol Rovers game. It was against Rovers last year when the Robinsonian era finally collapsed in on itself. I re-watched the highlights and re-read my blog and had forgotten a lot of it – two teams with identically poor records, the eccentric announcement of joint-captains, Sam Baldock career ending after 20 minutes, Cameron Brannagan conceding a penalty, being 2-0 down at half-time and Brannagan’s final rejection of Robinson in the post-match interview. It was biblical.

It didn’t help that, seven months on, yesterday looked almost identical to last year. The bright spring-like weather, the early kick-off, the banks of Bristol Rovers fans. Regardless of our form, the memories flooded back and suddenly we seemed a bit more vulnerable.

In fact, all Bristol Rovers games seem to be staged like this. There’s something unnerving about Rovers fans, they fill the away end regardless of their form or league position. It’s a bit like a YouTube prankster who has bottles smashed over their head or eats the world’s hottest chillies on film just for clicks. Is it commitment or a mental disorder?

Plus of course, there’s the record – before yesterday we’d only won once at home in twelve years, and that was during the lockdown season when nobody was there. I have a theory about that; we are very similar clubs so benchmarks of each other. An away following tends to be more cohesive, more prepared to be under pressure, more vocal and more positive; so in essence we’re playing the away-version of ourselves and we tend to get caught out by their brightness. It’s like when someone comes over for a cup of coffee and a catch up and they’ve dressed up while you’re still in your pyjamas.

It certainly seemed to be true yesterday; they opened with an vigour and intensity. It helps being led by Joey Barton – now dressing like a late-career Eminem or a New York based film actor who only dates vulnerable models. If Barton was returning to my parents’ house fire, he’d be the one with a cigarette lighter, flicking it on and off provocatively. While we made our characteristically sleepy start, they were instantly on the advance.

I’m beginning to think that this is our style; it’s like an extension of our warmup, there’s no real need to race to full throttle. It’s quite a departure from the Robinson years of going at everything full-gas all the time. The risk, of course, is that a team like Rovers could be in front before we’re in gear. It took some resolute defending and a couple of James Beadle saves to ensure that wasn’t the case.

Then, Ruben Rodrigues found a James Henry-esque angle to feed Billy Bodin and we were 1-0 up. In a sense, it was underserved, but the ability to score from relatively few chances is happening so frequently, it can’t be an accident.

Still they pushed, the question was how long they could keep it up, afterwards Barton claimed his team were ‘miles better’ – not just in the game, but in their prospects for the season.

But, they’re 13^th for a reason, the introduction of Mills and Murphy seemed to tame them; their intensity dropped while our wingers’ pace stretched them. Murphy was floored by Jevani Brown and sent off before Long, who’d had a generally wretched game, made it 2-0. For a team with the second best goal difference in the country, we are amazingly reliant on our defence at both ends of the pitch.

At one point, when Long shanked another clearance into the air, I dad-joked that he must be wearing the wrong boots. Five minutes later he changed them to a fetching red pair and seemed to improve; I am basically Gary Neville on Sky.

I have an emerging theory, the new rules around injury time have created a world in which The Science is still developing. It’s like when the back pass rule was introduced, goalkeepers would frequently make ridiculous mistakes because nobody had worked out how to cope with it. Eventually they developed an ability to launch a moving ball from the ground and back pass mistakes became vanishingly rare.

The new injury-time rule introduces a game within a game. When it’s tight, there’s suddenly 10 minutes of no-rules, no-tactics football. It means an increase in last minute panics, goals and sendings off. The tactic of trying to get Gatlin O’Donkor to hold the ball at the corner flag for quarter-of-an-hour seems unsatisfactory.

Collins rattled one in for Rovers in the last minute, putting the game in jeopardy. Smyth contrived to be booked twice during his seven-minute cameo; not so much an act of stupidity – although it was also that – more a response to growing pressure. Last season, with less injury time, he might have done it once. Now there’s time to do it twice.

Mills’ sending off looked harsh, he clearly got the ball and it’s hard to know what he’s supposed to do with the other leg that brought the player down. The reaction of the Rovers’ player – first to play on, then appearing to plead with the ref as if he’d fouled Mills – suggests that nobody else thought it was dangerous. We maybe overlook the referee’s fatigue, whose coda of booking anything untoward had become deep muscle memory.

Another win, the exorcising of last season, the (partial?) removal of the Rovers’ hex, Barton – a man who styles himself as a thinking thug because he once read Sun Tzu’s Art of War, joins every other manager we’ve beaten by complaining that they’ve only lost because of isolated moments. That’s great, Joey, now look at the table.