Back to the subject in hand.  - BEER.

Looks like we'll head into town sometime early afternoon and find a boozer thats not too full of celtic fans if possible.

Malt&Hops, Sir Charles, or Boro Arms look likely to start off.

Beat me to it Gav.

I would definately have been in Glasgow even if I had not got a ticket.  Having been to Sofia I reckon I would go somewhere similar without a ticket also - the game was just one small part of a fantastic 3 or 4 days.

The Celtic fans are going to have a great day tomorrow - and best of luck to them.  Let's make their visit an enjoyable one - and hopefully they will go back to Scotland raving about Rovers' hospitality and the atmosphere than we can generate on a ground half the size of theirs.

I for one would have no objections to Celtic fans adopting us as their team south of the border and every now and then a coachload turn out at Ewood - one way of filling the empty seats!!

See you tomorrow - some where, some time.

PS  Hope Tris has calmed down after his "Rubbish, Rubbish, Rubbish" post - I have to spend 8-10 hours in a car with him!!

There were 1400 liverpool fans with tickets at Basle, I can imagine that there were more than twice that actually there. - Its because the European occasion is something that we dont experience that often. - I would do the sofia / lyon experience again irregardless of if I had a ticket or not, but would hope that somehow I would manage to pick one up whilst over there.

CK - Unfortunately our local plod don't seem to have the same resources or knowledge of how to handle a large scale occasion such as this as the celtic fans, and take the easy way out.

The police in blackburn always overreact to things such as this.  It is true they have delivered letters to every landlord in the area, telling them to ensure their cctv is working and they have new tapes in.

Like Glasgow, you are not supposed to drink on the streets.  What you need to do is to get a few take outs from Morrisons and join the "bouley boys" on the bus station

David Thompson has been called up into Sven Goran Erikssons 26 man training get together on 18th November.

As expected the not yet fit Matt Jansen misses out, despite newspaper speculation to the contrary over the weekend.

David Dunn also appears to be well down the England pecking order, after a fairly inconsitent season so far.

The one surprise name in the squad, is Middlesboro's Jonathan Greening.

See separate thread.. starting now..

... nah, I'll highjack this one instead..

Any Fans fancy meeting - post here..   any of the Celtic fans who have graced this board - Smc, Pete etc feel free to meet up for a pint as well.

Gavs idea sounds best, meet near town somewhere, and head on down.  We can exchange mobile nos etc for later arrivals etc.

Just wait for SteB's comments on the fans yesturday. we were in the group top right and never stopped singing- mainly at the rovers fans such as ' you only singing when its celtic' and 'can you hear the rovers sing nnnnoooooo nnnnnnnooooooo' and at the end we were singing ' where were you when we were sh*t' as all the rovers fans sang after we scored. During the game one rovers fan had the cheak to tell us to 'shut up'

I'm keeping quiet on this one Jordan - like the fans did during the game.

It didn't help that the performance on the pitch was like Tris said, Rubbish.

tasher

If we actually analised the statistics, you would find that a lot of people on this board do not actually live in Blackburn town itself.

Supporters of Blackburn have historically been drawn from surrounding towns and villages, Accrington, Darwen, Ribble Valley Clitheroe, Oswaldtwistle etc.

Now the club draws supporters from further afield either because of migration due to employment or because of Blackburns success in the nineties. Blackburns best option these days for improved gates is going to be similar to Man U, who have gained a world wide following because of their success on the playing field. Apart from the die hards, football supporters are a very fickle bunch, who give their allegiance to any club that is successfull and that is media friendly.

Which is where I do believe the Hearts and Minds campaign fails, in the lack of ambition outside the town - the Rovers support in Blackburn itself is solid for the size of the town, what Rovers need to do is leverage more of the floaters from Ossy, Accy, Harwood etc

Rovers midfielder Ciaran Donnelly hit all 4 goals in a 4-0 England U19 friendly against Romania on Thursday evening.

This included a hattrick in 8 minutes, kick started when Donnely tapped in a free kick from Arsenals David Bentley in the 35th minute.  The 4 goal haul was completed when Connolly headed in another set piece from Bentley in the 53rd minute.

Jerome Watt also started the game, played at Northamptons Sixfields stadium.

Combined with decent performances from Neil Danns, James McIlvey, John Douglas and Marc Richards for the 1st Team against Walsall, its been a good week for rovers youth system.

Just want to add to the Daily Record comments.....an absolute joke of a newspaper....it's a rag...and that's putting it mildly.

The Daily Record does it's best to stir up the Scottish/English thing (which personally has no interest for me). They criticise any English comment about Scotland.....then go overboard with their assaults on English events (eg taking great pleasure when the English team fail)

Truth is, they have to play on such things to hide their lack of ability in the journalistic department.

Isnt the Daily Record the scottish variation of the Mirror ??

Which would explain things.

Incidentally, Pete1888, ever noticed how teams which score seven hit a barren run afterwards? Its happened to the Rovers every time after we tonked an English Premier League side for seven.

I remember beating Sheff Wed 7-2 in 97 was it?  We then scored 2 at palace the week after and 3 at home against leeds the week after that..

Then last season we followed up beating west ham 7-1 with 3 goals at highbury, so the fact that teams hit barren runs after scoring 7 is not really true.

Lets not be too over confident and wait for next Thursday to come and we'll see whos the better team

And followed those 2 games, with a 0-0 against Leicester where we were lucky to get 0

I didnt see too much problem with the restricted view tickets either, other than the one post ?

Looked far less restricted than a lot of normal view tickets at other clubs.

Well Done last night we out sung them all game.  How about on the way back, there was a serious accident so coaches were stuck on the motorway, then all rovers fans get out camera falshes go off and even mingling with a couple of celtic fans.  Then suddenly some rovers fan start to rock a celtic coach and a window is put in.  

Overall, just an amazing experience and believe me they are in for a shock when they come to Ewood!!

You must have been right next to me then.  I was on the Ewood Blues coach which was about 3/4 coaches back.

Stuck for about 2 hours I think.

Myself and Capt Kayos visited Celtic pubs within spitting distance of Parkhead last night, and whilst not being the most affluent of areas, the reception we got from the Celtic fans couldn't have been friendlier. On the way back from the ground we got lost and ended up walking approximately 6 miles rather than the 2 miles it is from Parkhead to the City centre. This detour took us through some unsavoury parts of Glasgow (including the Gorbals). However not once did we feel threatened or intimidated, and I can't remember having ever shaken so many hands!

In my experience the people of Glasgow showed themselves to be the most friendly and hospitable I have encountered whilst travelling with the Rovers.

Quite right, we were in a pub near the ground, and there was a great deal of good natured banter.   And they are all coming down for the Ewood leg as well.

Over the next week or so, we are finishing off all moves from the old hosting company to our new one.

In order to maintain any qualitiy of service, please update any bookmarks to point to WWW.BRFCS.BIZ for now.

Once this is done, you should notice no loss of service.

Cheers, and thanks for all your patience during this time

If you feel the need to email any admin staff please at least also cc admin@brfcs.biz - this will be directed to SteB's personal email and will ensure that at least you get some response.

Regards

Steve

Excellent post Gav.

What more can I say, apart from tickets go on sale tomorrow for season ticket holders,for the home leg.

Lets see if the home game is a sell out.

3 people in the queue outside the ticket office this morning!

Less of a stress though - Season ticket holders are guaranteed their seats if they book by next thursday.   People will come down when they have 5 minutes to spare, or just ring the ticket office.

The FA Have announced on their website www.thefa.com

Following the sending off of Blackburn manager Graeme Souness in his side's Premiership fixture with Liverpool at Ewood Park on August 28, Mr Souness has been fined £15,000. He has also received a three match touchline ban starting 4th November.

You can all shut up as 3000 wasnt near enough!! we could very easily of sold 3 times that!! Rovers had over 4800 requests on the 1st day of ticket sales!

Fortunatley i was one of the lucky few!

Unfortunatley Celtic only have to give us 3000 as per UEFA however they did originally offer us 7000!!

Why didnt we take them??

Rovers have denied that they were ever offered 7000 tickets for the celtic game.  Fact is tickets for all celtic areas went on sale very quickly after the draw was made.

This loyalty, season tickets etc. discussion is going nowhere.

Fact is, the club vastly underestimated demand for this game and as a result, on the day it was pot luck as to whether you were going to get a ticket or not.

If anyone has by-passed the rules then they can be criticised but let's not make those who got their ticket through normal channels and are going to the match feel guilty by conducting a witch hunt.

As always the definition of loyalty can be quite subjective so it is up to the club to make this call.

Spot on, Uddersfelt.  Some of our most loyal fans are arguably the exiles who are unable to get to any games but make all sorts of sacrifices to make sure they see and hear as much as they possibly can.  

Too many people for my liking seem obsessed with the vain attempt to identify themselves as better/more worthy fans than their neighbour.

Nobody understimates the level of sacrifices that many of the exiles make in order to get to games, not least the Rovers Board.   Fact is those who have taken the time to contact people at the club have been sorted out on numerous occasions when situations such as this arise - Jordan, Paul, MickeFin to name but 3 on this board.

The important thing is to get strike a balance with the ticketing policy that the club feel is fair to all fans.  Once this policy is made, then the club should publicise it fully and stick to it.   Fans will then know where they stand when a potential big game is coming up, even if all it means is they know that they must join the queue ridiculously early if they want to be sure of a ticket.

Over the last few seasons, there have been few occasions when stubs etc have come into play for tickets.   3 such occasions were Cardiff, Gillingham, and Burnley away

Cardiff ticketing was perfectly planned - those who queued all saturday were well treated, those who went to fulham / west ham didn't lose out, and in the end everybody who wanted a ticket got one.  

Gillingham away when we had about 1000 was well planned - the vouchers given at QPR gave people some priority, although lack of publicity of this led to lots being thrown away on the day.

Burnley away was well handled, althought the takeup from our fans for that game didnt really test the clubs ticketing policy.