Rovers Rearguard
Rovers Rearguard was one of the first Tranmere Rovers fan sites to ever be launched, founded by Barbara Jones back in the late 1990s when the internet was still in its relative infancy.
The site was soon moved on to a large commercial network, Rivals, which grew exponentially and hosted a network of fan-run websites for clubs up and down the country. Front page content was backed up by a strong message board community, and over the next 8-9 years the site grew to have over 1million page views at its peak.
Sadly, an ill-conceived redesign led to many users leaving the network en-masse, and the Rovers Rearguard community first dispersed to a new onigp website, latterly becoming The Cowsheds, and also spread to Total Tranmere. In the summer of 2009, the UK arm of Rivals closed and disappeared almost overnight such was the pace at which users and editors left.
In the years following, the roversrearguard.com domain was secured back from BskyB (the last owners of Rivals) and redirected to other TRFC sites.
In 2017, and with Tranmere struggling on the pitch in the Vanarama National League, and off the pitch for any sort of column inches in newspapers or decent editorial content online, the decision was made to bring Rovers Rearguard back to life.
The site initially launched with a selection of recent news, opinion and feature content, as well as a wealth of statistical information that – unlike many unofficial sites – is natively added, not supplied by any third party.
In the coming months, Rovers Rearguard will be looking to upload as much of its hefty back catalogue of content as possible. Former player interviews, in-depth features, match content and general news from the 2000s will be added to hopefully form one of the most in-depth archives of unofficial Tranmere content on the internet.
Write for Rovers Rearguard
We’re extending an invite for any budding (or established) writers to write for the website and have content published to a growing audience of TRFC fans.
While the vast majority of what we cover is going to be TRFC-related, we will also be writing some non-Tranmere content, so feel free to pitch your idea to us. If you can string some sentences together, and aren’t going to write something that can get us sued, then feel free to send us some ideas or content.
Write to us at admin@roversrearguard.com