The Boys from "The King Billy" and Banjo Island should be in fine voice at tonight's First Round replay of the FA Cup tie against Leyton Orient. After the Gas' narrow and contentious defeat at Swindon on Saturday the boys from East Bristol will be anxious to give the team their full backing.

Orient themselves are fully confident of a victory and keeper Glenn Morris is looking forward to the tie after making his first league start of the season. The 23-year-old stopper was handed a rare start at Huddersfield on Saturday after a recent dip in form by regular number one Stuart Nelson, whom Martin Ling blamed for their failure to secure maximum points in their 2-2 draw at home to Brighton.

Morris pulled off a string of fine saves to help secure a 1-0 win to send the O's back to the top of League One. He said: "It was great to be back playing and to help the team to such an important win.

"Hopefully I've done enough to keep my place now for the Bristol Rovers game. It would be great to be involved in an FA Cup tie now and I'm sure it is going to be a really hard game. They are a very physical and direct team so I'm sure if I do play I will be kept very busy.

"There is a big incentive sitting there though if you get through, with a home tie against Rushden and Diamonds in the next round. Of course we are only taking it one game at a time at the minute, but if we can beat Bristol Rovers you would have a great chance of progressing against a non-league club into the third round where you could face one of the big boys."

In original tie Orient went ahead in the 16th minute when striker Wayne Gray headed in a cross from midfielder Jason Demetriou. Rovers dominated the opening 20 minutes after the break and Rickie Lambert grazed Orient's bar with a free-kick, then wasted a chance when clear. However he made no mistake on 81 minutes when he met Stuart Campbell's corner to head a deserved equaliser.

Speaking after the game Orient's Boss Martin Ling said, "The negatives of Saturday's game cancel out the positives, that's for sure. Bristol Rovers deserved the draw - but the important thing is we were in the hat for the second round."

"Although we got our noses in front I thought that for 20 minutes either side of half-time we were poor. We just didn't have the ball retention which is a big part of what we believe in here.

"If you've got the ball and keep passing it to them, I don't think you can have ambition, wide players can't release themselves, full backs can't release themselves and we just didn't hold on to the ball at any given time and had no phases of play.

"That's disappointing because we work on it an awful lot and it is a side of our game that comes out most of the time but today it didn't."

"We now have to go down to Bristol on a Tuesday night which is not ideal. I would rather we'd put it to bed but our performance wasn't good enough to deserve it and I think a draw was probably a fair result."

Ling has had to almost completely revamp his team this summer - with 12 players leaving and 10 arriving. Several players were released after last season's successful escape from relegation trouble, while several more declined the offer of new contracts and long-serving club captain and former Gas player Matt Lockwood was sold to Nottingham Forest.

As well as strikers Wayne Gray and Adam Boyd, other new arrivals include ex-Sunderland midfielder Sean Thornton and former Brentford keeper Stuart Nelson. But former Wimbledon trainee Gray, who had a loan spell at Orient in 2001/02, is pleased to have returned to his London roots - after three successful seasons with Southend and Yeovil.

"London's where I'm from, I love playing here and I'm happy to be here," he said. "In the last three years, I've had two promotions and a play-off final, so I've been quite successful and hopefully I can bring some of that spirit here."

Gray commented: "It's quite similar here to Southend and Yeovil. If everyone backs each other up and works together, it's the togetherness that makes it all happen. I'm one of the new guys, but if you can gel together like we have, you never know what can happen. Everybody wants to start with a flier - and we've got off to a flier, but we just want it to continue and see how far we can take it."

Before the start of the season many outsiders were tipping the Londoners for the drop but, despite their storming start, Coach Martin Ling insists a mid-table finish would still be classed as a success come May.

"We are overachieving," he said. "People need to still set realistic targets for us. At the start of the season we said finishing in the middle eight this year would be a success.

"That still stands as far as my chairman is concerned and that is pleasing to know because some chairman could get carried away by our start."Having said that though, the longer our form continues and the longer we stay around that top eight, the more you start to believe.

"We need some luck obviously because we have got a small squad, but if we get that then yes I suppose the dream would be the play-offs."

Before looking at the history of Rovers and Leyton Orient games let us examine the roots of Leyton Orient; they can be traced back to 1881 as the football team of the Glyn Cricket Club for the purpose of keeping fit in the winter months. In 1888, on the suggestion of a player who worked for the Orient Shipping Line, the club took the name of Orient, which fits in nicely with their location in East London.

They changed their name in 1898 to Clapton Orient in an attempt to gain support from the affluent residents of Clapton, London, whilst 1937 saw them move to their current home in Leyton. The end of World War 2 found Orient, in common with Rovers, in financial trouble. A fighting fund was set up to alleviate these problems, and yet another name changed followed, this time to Leyton Orient.

In 1962, they reached the pinnacle of English football, gaining promotion to Division One and 2 years later, their record attendance of 34,345 for an FA Cup tie against West Ham United.

In recent times, they have again faced financial problems. As the end of the 1994-95 season approached, with relegation looming came the news that the Club faced severe financial problems, with the PFA covering players' wages for a while. Orient were asked by the Football League to confirm that they could fulfil their fixtures to the end of the season and for a while it looked as if they might not finish the season, let alone start the next one.

After small businessman Phil Wallace admitted he did not have sufficient funds to buy the club, sports promoter Barry Hearn stepped in to take control of the club he supported as a boy. The club has been stabilised financially and in May 1999, played at Wembley in the 3rd Division Play-Off Final. Although they lost to Scunthorpe United, over 25,000 O's fans made the memorable trip.

Two years later there was further disappointment with a 4-2 defeat against Blackpool at the Millennium Stadium in another Play-Off Final. Despite going ahead after just 27 seconds thanks to Chris Tate, the Seasiders were too strong in the end.

Three years of struggle followed before a mid-table finish in 2004/05 season and an automatic promotion as 3rd placed club the following year.

Orient's first season back in Division One was always going to be a struggle but they avoided the drop with a 20th place finish.

Rovers have had some exciting clashes with the East London team in recent seasons none more so than a 2001 Boxing Day eight goal thriller which saw the Gas run out 5-3 winners. It is interesting that generally games between the two teams are fairly low scoring affairs, with a few notable exceptions.

Orient have rarely scored many against the Gas and yet Rovers have hit a 4 and a 5 (besides that Boxing Day game) and amazingly enough they have both been in London. The first of those victories was a 5-1 win with goals from Holloway (2), David Williams, Randall and Withey on 23rd October 1982. Two years later on 30th November, Holloway, O'Connor (2) and Randall were scorers in a 4-1 win.

In 1998-99 the sides were paired together in both the FA Cup and League Cup. After a 1-1 draw at Brisbane Road in the Worthington Cup First Round First Leg, Mark Warren hit a dramatic 119th minute winner in Bristol after the tie looked set to go to penalties. But Rovers got their revenge in the FA Cup Fourth Round as three goals in the last 15 minutes saw off the O's challenge.

In recent years the likes of Lee Thorpe Justin Channing, Jamie Clapham and Jason Harris have played for both teams and of course Matty Lockwood played for both teams before his move to Forest. Wayne Carlisle is another who took the move up the M4.

In an early season game in 2004-05 Rovers travelled to Brisbane Road unbeaten with what appeared to be a rock-solid defence. However it crumbled and let in as many goals in one game as it had in the previous seven. It was a game in which Rovers played well in patches and actually led 2-1, but then conceded three goals in just seven minutes in the second half. It was Carlisle who inflicted much of the pain.

A Boxing Day home game with Leyton Orient gave Rovers the perfect opportunity for revenge for that first defeat of the season at Brisbane Road. However a Robbie Ryan handball on the line meant Rovers were down to 10 men and a goal down as Lockwood converted his penalty against his former team. Jamie Forrester equalised from the spot in the second half but Rovers found the one-man deficit too great to overcome a determined Orient team. It was Rovers' third draw in a row and a fourth game undefeated.

The last two seasons of League opposition saw the Gas win 3-2 in East London early in the season and then take part in a thrilling 3-3 draw at the Mem on 31st January 2006. Overall Rovers hold the upper hand with 41 victories to Orient's 32 in the 100 games.

In their game on Saturday Adam Boyd grabbed his eighth goal of the season to secure the O's first away win since their victory at the Mem in September, to go top of the League One table. Boyd cleverly hooked the ball home in style after just four minutes following good work by Adam Chambers.

Huddersfield dominated after Boyd's strike with O's keeper Glenn Morris making fine stops to deny Luke Beckett, Malvin Kamara and Danny Schofield. Tamika Mkandawire twice cleared off the line in the second half.

Martin Ling described Saturday's success as "A phenomenal result. To come to a place like this, against a side on a good run, and to put on a dogged display like we did is immensely pleasing," Ling enthused. "We played 98 minutes without conceding and it was important to see it through. Adam Boyd got his eighth of the season but out of the 12 players who played, I can't name a man of the match."

Talking about the Cup tie Ling said, "My understanding is that following Saturday they have got two players suspended and two more picked up serious injuries.

"If you take four players out of any starting team then you are going to weaken it, but it is still all about us worrying about what we do."

He added: "As I've already said there are three teams in the hat that have got a chance to progress to the third round, and out of us, Bristol Rovers and Rushden I believe we are the best side out of the three.

"I'm sure the win at Huddersfield will give us plenty of confidence going into the Bristol game now, because other than the Leeds match it is probably the hardest game we have faced this season.

"They had won every game they had played in November and I don't think too many people would have given us a chance of going there and getting a result on Saturday. But we put in a phenomenal performance and it is certainly nice to go into this Cup game on the back of a good win."

Clayton Fortune (shoulder), Sean Thornton (hamstring) and Efe Echanomi (knee) are all set to miss out. Defender Alton Thelwell (knee) is set to be rested, while on-loan Spurs winger Andy Barcham isn't illegible to play, because he hadn't signed for the club before the initial tie between the sides.

Rovers' of course, have their injury and suspension problems after their battle with Swindon and Mr Styles on Saturday. If Rovers come out with a win after this game their will be serious celebrations in "The King Billy" on Tuesday night!

Written by Gerry Prewett