Bristol Rovers

The Memorial Stadium seats 12,534, a number that has changed little across the ground's history at Horfield, and it remains a rugby venue as much as a football one — Bristol Rovers are tenants there rather than owners, sharing the pitch with the rugby club that gives the stadium its name. The arrangement says something about a club that has spent long stretches without a place fully its own.

Rovers trace back to September 1883, though the side that took the field that December played under a different name: Black Arabs, borrowed from a local rugby team and from the black shirts the players wore. By November 1884 they were Eastville Rovers, tied to the ground they used before the Memorial Stadium. The name Bristol Rovers only arrived on 7 February 1899.

The blue-and-white quartered shirts have stayed a constant thread through those changes, and so have two nicknames that pull in different directions. The Pirates nods to Bristol's maritime past; The Gas, the one supporters actually shout, comes from the gasworks that stood by Eastville Stadium, the ground Rovers left behind. Two names, two different sources, both still in use.

Jeff Bradford holds the club's scoring record, a figure that has outlasted the eras and divisions Rovers have moved through. Honours have come mostly in patches rather than sustained runs: the Third Division title in 1952–53 and again in 1989–90, a Watney Cup won on penalties against Sheffield United in 1972, and, decades later, promotion via the play-offs — Wembley wins over Shrewsbury Town in 2007 and, after a spell outside the Football League altogether, over Grimsby Town on penalties in 2015.

None of it carries the weight, locally, of the fixture against Bristol City. The Bristol derby is the match the city organises its football calendar around, the one where history and trophies matter less than which side of the city gets to talk for the next few months.