The 1960/61 season saw manager Bill Anderson’s knack for keeping City in the Second Division finally run out, and in October 1960 the last meeting between the two sides at Eastviile in the second tier saw the by-now almost obligatory three goals conceded with only one from left-winger Derek Hawksworth in reply. The Imps this time finished the season well adrift at the foot of the table to bring to an end something of a golden age for the club. Bristol Rovers were also on the slide, and at the end of the following season they too dropped out of the division. Before this however, further ground improvements saw new terracing and the addition of a larger roof at the Tote End. The fact that this benefited patrons of the greyhound racing as much as the football supporters, was shown by the moving of the Totalisator indicators to the roof fascia, being visible from both sides of it.
While City were languishing in the Fourth Division after dropping straight through the Third Bristol Rovers became established members of that division before winning promotion back to Division Two in 1974.
In 1977 speedway was introduced to Eastville alongside the greyhounds and the football when the Newport Wasps relocated to Bristol, changing their name to the Bristol Bulldogs. Unusually, the speedway track was placed on top of the greyhound circuit and then dug up again after every meeting. It also saw a reduction in size of the football pitch to make it the joint smallest in the Football League. However, the speedway only lasted for two years before the operation ended.
There was trouble for the club at the end of 1979 when the time came to renew their lease on Eastville, as the owners, the Bristol Greyhound Racing Company would only agree a short-term deal, meaning the club would have to move out by May 1982. Despite anger from supporters of both the Bristol clubs a £40,000 a year agreement was made with Bristol City to share their Ashton Gate ground from after that date.
Even worse trouble then came with a serious and apparently unexplained fire at the stadium in August 1980 which saw most of the wooden South Stand destroyed causing more than £1 million worth of damage with the loss of the club offices and changing rooms. The stand was left as a shell for a while before being demolished leaving only an open terrace.
Rovers played five home games at Ashton Gate before returning to Eastville after two months with portable cabins being used as dressing rooms.
The 1980/81 season ended with relegation back to Division Three after seven undistinguished seasons in the Second. This meant their paths again crossed with Lincoln City who had just won promotion from the Fourth under manager Colin Murphy.
The Imps’ first visit to Eastville for over 21 years came at the end of September 1981 and a rather injury-hit side which included loanee Lindsay Smith at centre half ran out 2-0 winners with goals from big striker Tony Cunningham and former Scunthorpe attacker Steve Cammack. The win put City up to ninth place in the table but they were unable to maintain a high position until well into the second half of the season when a long unbeaten run saw them eventually miss out on promotion in fourth place.
After the end of the season Rovers’ plans to share Ashton Gate were stymied when Bristol City were declared bankrupt and their new owners doubled the amount previously agreed to share the stadium. The club was forced back to negotiate with the Greyhound company and a £52,000 five-year contract saw them remain at Eastville. From then on, with the club’s offices based at their Hambrook training ground, during the week the only person on duty at Eastville from the football club was the groundsman.
I paid my first visit to Eastville in September 1982 for City’s next game there. Standing in the Tote End, my chief memory is of the incomprehensible Totalisator display on the inside of the front of the roof (by now the exterior aspect of the display had been replaced by an advertisement). There was also an irritating distance from the pitch due to the curved end to the ground. An earlier, and probably unique, feature of the ground was the provision of flower beds behind the goals, but if they were still there in 1982, I don’t remember them. There was also the sight of the elevated motorway which by then had been built beyond the far end. Eastville was closer to a motorway (the M32) than any other ground in the country and it was said that large numbers of people would stop their cars on the hard shoulder for a free view of the match before being moved on.
The early part of City’s season had been mostly taken up with cup games, but a 2-1 win with goals from midfielders George Shipley and Phil Turner was their fourth league win in five games and moved them up to second place. The Rovers side included two later Imps players in Errington Kelly and Nicky Platnauer, but more notably the game marked the last appearance in a Lincoln shirt of Tony Cunningham before his sale to Barnsley for £80,000 after scoring seven goals in ten games in the season so far.
The season was not quite a mirror image of the previous one for City, but they fell away towards the end to miss out on promotion again, this time in sixth place. Consequently, I was back at Eastville at the end of April 1984 as one of, according to reports, only 32 visiting supporters in a crowd of 3,254, the lowest in Bristol Rovers’ league history up to that time. This was towards the end of a season which had seldom seen the Imps much above halfway. Although fifth at the time Rovers had little chance of making it into the top three but were too good for City with a 3-1 win, the Imps goal coming from a penalty by midfielder Marshall Burke. The Rovers side included 31-year-old winger Ian Holloway and former Imps loanee Steve White who contributed one of their goals. It was something of a makeshift City side, with Phil Neale having returned to cricketing duties, George Shipley left out and on-loan defender Alan Webb included. Unused substitute was 18-year-old defender Chris Moyses.
