Steve Smith looks back on Bristol City's encounters with clubs who have 'disappeared'
To balance things up, here is a group of clubs Bristol City supporters will no longer plot a route for.
Like Bristol Rovers, City too faced two sides from Wales that have long since departed the Football League; Aberdare Athletic and Merthyr Town.
Elected to Division Three South in 1921-22, Aberdare plied their trade in for six seasons in the Football League, failing to gain re-election at the end of 1926-27, and it was the first visit of Bristol City in only their second campaign that drew the club's record crowd at the Athletic Ground when 16,350 fans gathered on April 2 in 1923 when their average home attendance was only 7,600.
The trip to mid-Glamorgan proved worthwhile for table-toppers City as won 1-0 win and proved to be a springboard for success for the Robins in their next three visits, drawing one match 3-3 and winning two more, the latter by an emphatic score line of 7-3 on Christmas Day in 1926.
Merthyr's stay in the Football League lasted throughout the 1920s where City fans made four trips to Panydarren Park with the first two visits victorious.
The remaining two meetings produced only one point for City as Merthyr's fine home record during 1925-26, where they won 13 matches, included a 3-2 win over the Robins in April, 1926.
City were well placed in Division Three South when they played their fourth and final match at Panydarren Park, fighting back to earn a 1-1 draw in December 1926.
Nelson was another club who took part in 10 campaigns in the Football League and spent all but one season in the Third Division North. The only time they moved up a league coincided with Bristol City's elevation to Division Two as both clubs were crowned champions of their respective regional third divisions.
The only occasion Bristol City fans travelled to this part of Lancashire came on November 24, 1923 when a crowd of around 8,000 gathered at Seedhill to see these two struggling sides contest what was an early relegation dog-fight.
Despite drawing level through an Alex Torrance penalty, it was not enough to go on and forge an away win as Nelson's Joe Eddleston grabbed his second of the match late in the second half to make it 2-1.
Nelson hold the record of consecutive away defeats in the Football League with 24, losing their final three matches at the end of 1929-30 and all 21 games during their final season in 1930-31.
If Nelson were appalling on their travels, then Bradford Park Avenue, who played League football between 1908-09 to 1969-70, were simply amazing at home when they set a record of winning 25 consecutive matches at their Park Avenue ground in the mid-1920s.
City faced them on 10 occasions in all that time and it was on their first and last visits to Park Avenue in 1911-12 and 1962-63 respectively that they managed to come away with maximum points.
It was in April 1912 that City ran out at Park Avenue for the initial meeting in Division Two and inflicted Bradford with their fourth home defeat of the season when Ebenezer Owers netted his first goal for City early in the first half to earn both points. Three days later in the return fixture at Ashton Gate he did it again when the result was the same.
Half a century went by before the Robins claimed only their second away win at Park Avenue, winning 5-2 on September 29, 1962 before a crowd of 8,917. Brian Clark and Jantzen Derrick netted a double each with Alex Tait also scoring.
We end our journey around the forgotten grounds at Borough Park, home of Workington who faced City for the only time as a Football League club during the Robins' Division Three promotion season in 1964-65.
Having already walloped the Cumbria side 5-0 at Ashton Gate in September 1964 courtesy of a Clark hat trick and a brace from Terry Bush, the return fixtures four months later was not so pleasant as Workington claimed their eighth home win of the season on January 14, 1965.
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