{"id":238664,"date":"2025-07-04T23:38:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238664\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T23:38:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:38:17","slug":"bristol-rovers-begin-league-two-preparations-with-narrow-friendly-victory-at-chippenham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238664\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristol Rovers begin League Two preparations with narrow friendly victory at Chippenham"},"content":{"rendered":"

The match-report as Bristol Rovers began their 2025 pre-season schedule with a friendly victory at Chippenham Town<\/p>\n

Daniel Hargraves<\/strong> Bristol Rovers reporter<\/p>\n

21:29, 04 Jul 2025<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers take on Chippenham Town in their first pre-season friendly(Image: Bristol Live)<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers kicked off their 2025 pre-season schedule with a 2-1 friendly win away at National League South outfit Chippenham Town on Friday evening as goals from Ruel Sotiriou and Micah Anthony either side of half-time were enough for victory.<\/p>\n

The game was the Pirates\u2019 first since the return of club legend Darrell Clarke, who will take charge of Rovers for their upcoming League Two campaign.<\/p>\n

Chippenham had decent opportunities to open the scoring as both their starting strikers came close before Ruel Sotiriou couldn\u2019t beat the goalkeeper after breezing past a couple of defenders.<\/p>\n

The Rovers striker, who scored six goals in League One last season, broke the deadlock a minute later as strike partner Promise Omochere showed excellent strength to beat his nearest man before squaring the ball for a straightforward tap-in.<\/p>\n

Connor Taylor, Luke Thomas, Ollie Dewsbury and Alfie Kilgour all came close to adding to the Gas\u2019 lead before poor play in the middle led to a chase between Ward and a Chippenham striker. The goalkeeper mistimed his kick, gifting Chippenham an empty net to bundle into for an equaliser just before half-time.<\/p>\n

Rovers made six changes at half-time, having already made four alterations after the half-hour mark.<\/p>\n

Ollie Dewsbury and Kofi Shaw came closest to scoring in a quiet opening to the second half before Micah Anthony rose highest to head home from a corner after the hour-mark to restore the Gas\u2019 lead.<\/p>\n

Anthony came closest to adding third late on after getting the ball past the Bluebirds\u2019 goalkeeper but couldn\u2019t get the right contact to bundle the ball over the line.<\/p>\n

The Gas are now set to jet out to Spain for a warm-weather training camp before taking on League One side Stockport County in their next friendly contest on Saturday, July 12.<\/p>\n

They will then face Bath City, Yeovil Town, Coventry City and Oxford United upon their return to England before kicking off the competitive season with a home game against Harrogate Town.<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers starting team and changes:<\/strong> Jed Ward (Brad Young 46\u2019); Macaulay Southam-Hales (Joel Senior 30\u2019), Alfie Kilgour (Taylor Moore 46\u2019), Connor Taylor (Dan Ellison 46\u2019), Jack Sparkes (Bryant Bilongo 46\u2019); Shaq Forde (Kofi Shaw 46\u2019), Josh McEachran (trialist 30\u2019), Kamil Conteh (Isaac Hutchinson 46\u2019), Luke Thomas (trialist 46\u2019); Ruel Sotiriou (Micah Anthony 30\u2019), Promise Omochere (Ollie Dewsbury 30\u2019)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The match-report as Bristol Rovers began their 2025 pre-season schedule with a friendly victory at Chippenham Town Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,2707,748,46615,393,4884,89503,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-238664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-rovers-fc","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-darrell-clarke","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-josh-mceachran","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114797602695538028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}