Rovers United

Rovers United are a Saturday football team made up of 19 team members.

The team is from Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and play in the Portsmouth Saturday Football League, , , , , Div 1.

Rovers United started using TeamStats in September 2008 and so far have created match reports and statistics for 62 games.

This is a very potted history to which more will be added if anyone takes an interest but Havelock Rovers was started in 1992 by young Dave Cotton and his slopey sidekick Delbert Tollerfield.

After being promoted before a game had been played, that is being put in to the second bottom division!, Havelock went on to get relegated having achieved a massive two points!

In the bottom division things improved as we managed six points but still finished in last place!

However, thereafter the tide turned as the manager (Dave Cotton) made some astute signings and the team ended up on a golden run accumulating two titles and a semi-final which saw the Rovers promoted into the top division of Portsmouth football.

This was swiftly followed by a victory in the prestigios Purcell Cup, a top three finish in the Portsmouth League and the following year losing finalists in the Billy Hill Cup.

Now a number of us have decided to 'put the band back together'! If it ends up being half as good as last time it will be worth it!

November 2011:

What a ride! In our first season back we ended up getting promotion just behind Portsmouth Kurdish Utd who we had two quality games against with honours being even apart from Rovers having scored more goals!

We did the double against six teams, won 48 points and scored 50 goals which for a bunch of old guys that hadn't played fooy for a long time wasn't bad!

As Runners Up in Div 2 we went up to Div 1 with hopes for a top three finish but struggled with a lot of injuries and unavailabilty to some of the main players in the previous season's promotion side including Chris Yoxall, Patrick Jones, Paul Denton and Ben Sutherland. However due to good management as usual, Rovers managed to stay up and finished just below half way in the table with 21 points.

A lot of the old guard have now retired ..... let's see if the new kids on the block with some elderly help can see the team push on the Premier League?

2010-2011 started badly and the went downhill! It was no-one's fault in particular but we just seemed to lose by the odd goal or get stuffed!

It seemed that the turning point had been reached when manager Dave Cotton went on holiday and Arron 50p foot took over which resulted in Rovers first win of the season. However, upon his return Dave continued his magic losing touch picking up 6 points from a possible 24 up til the end of February.

Rovers needed eight points from their last four games to be safe from relegation, almost the same number of points as from most of the rest of their season!

It seemed very unlikely but a draw against promotion contenders Southside, a win against relegation rivals Mead End and four historic points in more ways than one! against Voyers secured Division 1 survival.

Rovers United (the follow on from Rovers Reunited which was the reformation of Havelock Rovers) is now an established Div 1 side looking to push on to promotion this season. Let's see what happens.... the future is the future and the past is the past... so bring on the new guns!