Who would believe that a grainy YouTube video taken from an old VHS tape with the title ‘Jason “Aussie Keeper” Kearton, Crewe Alexandra vs Blackburn Rovers’ would have over 14,000 views?
Well, perhaps it’s been so popular because it’s one of the greatest performances by a Crewe player in their history and probably the greatest goalkeeping display seen at Ewood this century, despite the legendary Brad Friedel being around for eight years of it.
“That's a game he's won for us,” said his manager Dario Gradi. “He grew a telescopic arm for that save in the second half.”
The match on Sunday 12th March 2000 was screened live on Sky and was the finest showcase of what went wrong in 1999/2000: teams coming to Ewood to defend and frustrate, misfiring forwards failing to score, and opposition players raising their games to a high level.
Rovers recorded a staggering 39 shots, with 18 on target. Ashley Ward, Matt Jansen, Damien Duff, Keith Gillespie and Per Frandsen were all stopped multiple times by one-man defence Kearton and the culmination was almost inevitable.
After a mad scramble at the Blackburn End, Crewe went straight up the other end and snatched a late winner from Colin Cramb.
The Lancashire Telegraph’s Peter White reported: “Rovers seem to be making losing matches they should have won into some kind of masochistic art form, torturing the Ewood faithful who gave up their Sunday roast to suffer once again at the hands of their own team.”
“You would be hard pushed to think of a game where there have been so many efforts at goal,” said caretaker manager Tony Parkes. “But it’s just the story of the season, isn’t it? We just can’t score goals. It should have been over and done with – the keeper was fantastic.”
Play-off hopes were now effectively gone and a change was needed urgently. Just days later, Graeme Souness was appointed manager giving a much-needed boost to the club and allowing him time to assess the squad before a serious promotion attempt the following season.
But perhaps it was our very own Glenn Entwistle who set off this particular chain of events with another of his many Rovers tales…
