I was thinking something similar. burnley (along with Wolves) have been Champions of each of the old Divisions. However, The Rovers can also claim to have been Champions of every domestic league they have played in. .....and we've never been beaten by The Isle of Man.

Well Bolton Road is the A666 I suppose !! The Dropkick Murphy's did a raucous version of 'The Wild Rover', which may be one that the fans can join in with (bit like The Liquidator at Wolves). (Still think Quo's 'Caroline' is the best show opener ever though....)

They didn't even beat us with the floodlights either. If their game was in '1890 odd', then The Rovers beat them to that too - by about 12 years.... The Rovers played against Accrington at Alexandra Meadows on 4th November 1878 under 'artificial light'. Provided by two gramme lamps, each of which had 6000 candle power. Each lamp was on a scaffold 30 to 40 feet high. One lamp at each end of the pitch. The ball was painted white to help visibility. The attendance was around 6000 and The Rovers won 3-0. **.....and before they mention another piece of their 'illustrious history' (read: 'burnley have no history/tradition so we'll just make it up and keep repeating it until everyone believes it'...... ), The Rovers were also the first team to play on an artificial pitch too. A duck pond at the Oozehead ground was covered with planks and straw matting for each game !

Bought my ticket at dinnertime today from Ewood. Surprised to see such a long queue (it was into the BBE about half way down), took about an hour to reach the windows, (3 out of 9 open). Queue was just as long when I left. It did cross my mind that it was silly to be lining up when my ticket is guaranteed but it saves having to go over again if the snows come down this week. Reading the LET while waiting, Tony Grant reckons they have nothing to fear in the replay having drawn with The Rovers already, and Scummings thinks that their French lad was the best player on the pitch on Sunday (!!), and paps on about how close the two teams are (but I lost interest so didn't get to the point of his column....if there was one). We're all entitled to our own opinions I suppose and those are theirs. I feel confident about the replay as I know The Rovers can and will play a lot better on a decent pitch (we were the better side on their pudding of a field in any case). It seems that they feel they played quite well on Sunday, and if their confidence is based on that performance there should be no problems for The Rovers next week.

Probably not. (ENT in burnley I mean). The way the Health Service is set up around here the hospitals tend to have certain departments only. So it must be Blackburn for the ENT stuff and, for example, burnley for dermatology. If you're ill and live in the right town you're OK, otherwise it's a trip along the M65 to be seen/treated by the relevant section. And the Ivy Street entrance to BRI does look a bit like it's from 'Carry On Doctor'. Hattie Jaques would set it off nicely ! ( New hospital at Queens Park looks super swish though )

Think you may fond we have Accrington Stanley to thank for that. Of course you would need to be able to read to work that out. The Accrington Stanley one was at half time. The one before the game was the poor attempt by a dingle nightclub. But, as you say, you'd have to be able to read........

I don't think so. There were a few twelve year olds at the corner of the longside being hard and trying to taunt the Rovers fans after the game. I think one or two of the older ones were dragged out by the fuzz (which must have hurt !). Best entertainment of the day that. Second was the streaker who after having his 'moment' turned around to be arrested and found nil interest from the police. He had to stand there like a fool not knowing what to do whilst the stewards etc. finally got around to taking him away. Outside was quite calm post game. I didn't go on a coach but I didn't see any trouble. Didn't go into the town centre though...... Lots of locals stood at the various traffic lights/roundabouts along Eastern and Casterton Avenues (route of coaches back to the M65). Didn't look like they were after trouble though, mainly local kids. One lass was even parked up waiting with a baby in a pram...'look son, remember this day. See them, they're called coaches ?'. Generally I was a bit disappointed that we didn't finish the tie today. burnley were poorer than I expected. The Rovers seemed to take the ball off them with ease on occaision. Second half was a bit more competitive, but still not great by either side. The Rovers probably shaded the game and should be confident in the replay. Was the burnley fc bar sign eventually removed ?

Not sure what the ticket selling policy is for them, but my lads best friend and his family all went on the Leeds game so they could get tickets for the Cup match. They haven't been to watch burnley for years, this being their first visit that I am aware of. The best friend usually says burnley are rubbish and he wouldn't want to watch them. (He is a tv Rangers fan). We were waiting for a suitable time (when everyone was available) for them to come to Ewood to watch The Rovers, but I'm not sure how this latest development will affect that (them going to the dark side and all)......

Whatever. But they DID NOT sell out their allocation.

No you did not ! I remember at the time the excuse was that the burnley ticket office couldn't process all the applications in time (!!!!), and then there was some rubbish about the reason being that some had simply chosen not to hand their money over to The Rovers !! But, a bit like the line about burnley having a great history and tradition (how many FA Cups is it ? Champions of England how many times ? When was the League Cup won ? First club to do what, exactly ?........), if you repeat it often enough once the memory starts to fade people actually take it as gospel !

I think that the £2m* has been included in the £4.5m Rangers offer. That is they gave us £2.5m cash and released the obligation to pay the £2m. If they gave us £4.5m cash and we then gave them the £2m back in August, it would amount to the same. We, therefore, paid £4.5m and have got back £2.5m, possibly rising to £3m. Cost of Barry, therefore is at best £1.5m plus wages. I think...... * Rangers said the amount was £2.5m, JW said it was £2.1m

Don't know that much about him, but the people on the messageboard appear to be fairly glum about it. They don't seem to rate him that much and are of the opinion that if that's the best they can offer the deal is as good as dead. I suppose it depends how desperate we are for a striker now that time is running out, though.....

They can't resist a dig though, can they ? One comment from them was 'oh, I was hoping for a bigger team.....'

Apparently Radio Scotland has reported that Shota Arveladze has been offered by Rangers as part of a player/cash deal. The Rovers are supposedly considering this.

He was. He missed a sitter at the cricket field end just after half time. At least he will know what the rivalry is all about !

Frustratingly I only caught a bit of it, (the dog was giving the postie a bit of stick), but Radio 5 reported the same thing. I think they also said that Newcastle were 'confident something would be arranged today', which they took to mean that either a foreign loan was in the offing, or another club had made a bid......... (I suppose celtic could be classed as foreign)

Interesting argument. We'll not use the amount of things won, ever, in order to judge how big a club is, we'll just base it on the number of times you can beat Aston Villa. Admittedly, birmingham should be a bigger club than The Rovers, but I don't think they are. If the achievements, histories etc. of both clubs were to be removed from the records I think there would be more of a loss to football in general from The Rovers than from birmingham. The 'size' of a club is often based on opinion (even the muppets down the M65 consider themselves a 'big club'.......), and is ultimately not that important anyway. Let's just say that should he sign for The Rovers, Robbie Savage would be joining a more successful club

Dickov's suspension starts 7 days after the 5th booking, under the totting-up rules. Red card suspensions start immediately. ....ahhhh !!! That explains it then ! Thanks !

It's probably a dumb question, and I really should know the answer, but why doesn't Dickov's suspension cover the Cardiff cup game ? I thought the new rule was the suspension came into effect for the next game to be played. Still, a good result today from a potentially tricky game, and the other scores went our way too........got to be worth a beer in anyone's book !!

I'm not sure how contracts work, or what term Ferguson agreed to, but maybe it was one of the (seemingly popular) one's that had 'a one year option'. I think it was mentioned that Mark Hughes has this in his contract and Craig Short and Tugay both took up their options recently. Maybe Murray has been told that Barry is not going to take up his option ? I am not sure if this option is down to the player to decide, or whether The Club can enforce it too, but if it was in place it would maybe explain the difference in terms mentioned.

More from The Times (yesterdays edition....not been to the paper shop yet). The Rovers should have sacked Souness a year ago and Newcastle are due to sack him in the next couple of games.

Unfortunately that is going to be how this will conclude. All the NewsNow headlines of 'D'Urso under investigation' & 'FA to probe ref.' etc. are not going to do us any favours. He isn't being called into question for a pathetic performance bordering on blatant bias, but more because he failed to make sure our player was removed from the pitch. If D'Urso is relegated to the Coke leagues it will be because he didn't do something to hinder us further, and the suspension for Ferguson will still be applied. (but I suppose it would mean we wouldn't get him at our games for a while )

As with Souey's comments in the press regarding funds (or lack of) for transfers ("we're skint....oh hang on, here's a record signing") I wouldn't read too much into the situation with Yorke. If Dwight does remove his digit and becomes the player he was at Villa and ManUre, then I'm sure he will be an asset to our team and save us a fortune in the transfer market. However, Souey also offered similar olive branches to Lee Carsley ("He's my type of player"), Christian Dailly ("The manager has told me that players will be sold, but I'm not going to be one of them") and Ashley Ward (who was allocated the #9 shirt as main striker, only to be moved on a couple of games into the season) , are 3 instances that spring to mind, there may be others (Dunn decided to jump before he was pushed...but he was probably going to be pushed....). Reading his autobiography, Souey is self critical about things that went wrong at Liverpool. He couldn't understand why certain players didn't covet being in the first team as he had. He says that it started to go wrong with his attitude to the 'spice boys' preferring to play video games rather than football games : "......my reaction to any dissidents was to get them out of the door as soon as possible. That was the wrong approach. What I should have done was to keep them for another year and buy myself some time to bring in replacements....." I think Dwight still has a lot to do to become a first team regular.......

It was on the 12th April 1972. (My first Rovers match !!). I only went to see the kangaroo, which was Prague's mascot, but was annoyed that they didn't bring it. They had a picture of one on their club badge, though, which wasn't the same. I spent most of the game embarassing my older brother by shouting out 'which one's Bobby Charlton ?!' at the top of my voice and making a rocket out of old MaxPax coffee cups, which I couldn't take home, so that was another downer. Still, we all have to start somewhere !