The Robins pub in the shadow of Bristol City's Ashton Gate stadium has been the spiritual pre-match home for thousands of fans.

So when it closed earlier in the season, fans mourned its passing as if a relative had died.

But now new life has been breathed into the pub thanks to a couple who are life-long City fans.

When Sarah Medcraft and Rob Jones heard the pub had closed they couldn't bear to see one of the City fans' favourite watering holes empty.

So they decided to run it themselves - despite it meaning they would have to juggle the job with managing supporters' bar BS3 around the corner.

The Robins shut its doors at the beginning of the year and its owners, Enterprise Inns, sought a new licensee to take on the pub in Ashton Drive.

City fans voiced their disapproval at the closure because it was the latest in a string of pubs around Ashton Gate to have shut in recent years including The Wedlocks and The Ship and Castle in Ashton Vale.

But Sarah, 39, and her fiance Rob, 30, saw the closure as a chance to rescue a flagging pub which used to be bursting with football fans on match days.

The pub reopened at the end of January with a new name, The Robins BS3, and a new look. Sarah said the couple planned to do even more with the premises.

She said: "Our feeling was that we couldn't let a City pub close. It's such a feature in the area. We felt is shouldn't be allowed to be closed because so many other pubs are shutting at the moment.

"The response from customers has been very positive and we are getting more and more people in every week as they dip their toes back in. We run it in the same way as BS3 - with no trouble and no one under 21.

"We have door staff at the weekend to reassure people and we see it as a pub for the whole community and not just a small section of it."

Sarah said the pub now had live music on Saturdays, quizzes on Sundays, cocktails and drinks promotions and a food menu will be available from April. The pub has its own darts team and a new pool team is in the process of being formed.

The pair used to run the Ship and Castle and have been in the pub trade for five years.

Rob has been a City supporter since he was a teenager and Sarah has been following the team since she met him six years ago.

She said: "I'm not sure if we are totally insane taking it on because we run the BS3 around the corner. I'm the licensee there and Rob is the licensee at The Robins but we have a good team of people around us.

"The pub had been allowed to get rundown and there had been some mismanagement of the type customers in there.

"We only had five days to prepare for the reopening and we tried to do as much as we could in the way of decorating and work in the cellar. The front of the pub has slightly changed but it's a work in progress at the moment."