Does anybody else look forward to tomorrow more than Christmas?

Out of interest has anything ever been said or implied about whether we'd sell the naming rights to Ewood? Totally Wicked do - or did - sponsor St Helens RFC's ground, which got me thinking! Another point which got me thinking, with all the (very admirable) outreach work the club have been doing amongst the South Asian community, how does having a vaping sponsor sit with our appeal to them? By my understanding, vaping is disapproved of in Islam much in the same way tobacco is. Not having our main piece or merch sit comfortably with a demographic we are trying to capture isn't great.

Where it could be communicated to fans (i.e. at such a level where grounds have screens or electronic scoreboards), 90 minutes to be done away with and replaced by the rugby method of time only advancing (generally) when the ball is in play, say for 2x35 mins. Also, during all instances of penalties, players cannot pause between commencing their run up and placing their grounded leg to strike the ball. Similarly, during shootouts, keepers forbidden from advancing beyond the six yard box between kicks.

Off-topic but that Chorley effort above is something Rovers should have been all over a long time ago - a range of leisure / beach / summer- wear, that is modern, smart and stylish and still conveys the club's identity, without being your traditional 'look at that bloke, at the beach in a football shirt ffs'. Half the stuff we have in at the minute looks like the kind of thing you'd wear to do the gardening, the other half looks like something you knock together in Paint in ten minutes. Why don't we develop a new range playing on the 1875 / Arte Et Labore theme? Team up with relevant part of Blackburn College if there is one (or similar) and spin it as part of our giving community partnership stuff? Why are teams at Tier Six (and below!) doing stuff that appears beyond us?

Yes the UK's expensive, yes there are social problems which we are generations off solving, yes politically we've had better days (IMO), but I am genuinely amazed this country can contain cities like Bath, York and Edinburgh; countryside like the Cotswolds, Lake District and Snowdonia; one of the world's and some of Europe's foremost cities; and more sport, culture and recreational activity than you can shake a stick at all pretty much within a day's drive of each other; an entire continent on your doorstep and the most successful town football team on the planet (probably) and people still think it's a shithole. What seriously do people want?

I won't be there myself - agonisingly I'm in Glasgow the weekend after (hotel for £40 when I booked 😉) and can't really justify it twice in a week - but I thoroughly recommend the Laurieston Bar if any of you are getting the train up to Glasgow Central. No idea what they are like with colours so perhaps cover up, but it is a proper, proper old school boozer if that's your thing. Excellent city in general and certainly good for the ale, have a great day / weekend whoever is going.

Must admit I'm not a fan of the FA Cup Final not bringing the curtain down on the domestic season.

Oh I realise I am definitely being wishful; I just look at the women's national team and see them playing at the likes of Norwich, Middlesborough and Wolves and think what a good idea it is to take it to the people - if you're a kid growing up on Tyneside it's highly unlikely you'll ever get the time or money for a day out a Wembley, but say a qualifier v. Andorra at the Stadium of Light? I accept finals and meaningful England fixtures are a different thing altogether mind. I used to on occasion work in that corner of London; the area around the stadium, as with a lot of major cities, is a very strange mix of expensive new apartments and shops and old, run down equivalents practically right next door. I find the stadium and area a bit soulless myself, it literally just looks like a massive computer generated image with no character or anything. Sorry, I was definitely a massive arsehole with the nature of that reply. The point about automatic promotion is a fair one, but I think it still demonstrates how practically every other team in the 92 has had some form of 'big day out' or similar over the past 15 years. Our single promotion aside, it feels a little bit like we've just existed rather than lived in the same timeframe.

What a bizarre post. I was merely responding the poster who originally brought up the point with an actual list. I would like to think it's an interesting bit of trivia whatever way you want to interpret it. For what it's worth I've been to the new Wembley and I think it's shit. It should have been flogged for housing, England should tour the country to actually take the game to the masses, and finals should be held at vastly the many vastly superior club grounds around England.

Not usually one for the cliched stories of excess and 'banter', but the Undr the Cosh with ex-West Brom midfielder Andy Johnson is brilliant. The bloke is full blown mental in the best possible way.

This could go in any number of forums really but I might as well stick it here. I really don't get the recent spate of pitch invasions. Seems to be the latest go-to fad now that crowds are back in the proper sense. It was a seeming increase in general unruliness to start with, then flares everywhere, now this; with added assault and whatever else for flavour. The way we're going there'll be a night of rioting when someone gets a last minute equaliser chalked off next season. I don't want to sound old - I can just about remember Cardiff in 2002! - but it really puts me off does this kind of thing. I love away days, passionate crowds and whatever else but lately it's seems like there's loads of ****heads on god knows what trying to get a kick or a decent Insta story or whatever by doing random, pointless shit. Edit - I will also say, I dread to think what the potential solutions are if this starts to get properly out of hand...

... and we can also remove Port Vale! We're now one of six, or one of seven depending on who wins the National League play-off... (Thanks for all the Stockport corrections, that had completely passed me by, but in my defence it was a while ago!)

The club that's proof that owners fiddling football clubs for all they're worth is nothing new. I've been to their old ground in Glasgow, it survives as a public park and football pitch, with the terracing still there, lost amongst trees. A haunting but fascinating place.

It will be, they've only had relegation from the fourth division into the leagues below for a decade or so now. It being a play-off, they're only the fourth team from the 'traditional' 42 to go, however none have ever come particularly close to making a return. I completely agree with the names by the way, I was always taken in by the likes of Queen of the South and Albion Rovers.

It's got all the makings of a few years ago when Man City had to beat Brighton away on the final day to win the league. Brighton went 1-0 with about 10 minutes gone, which was then followed by City annihilating from that point onwards to win 4-1...

4,000 Holes listed them all recently. From next season it'll be ourselves, Accy, Colchester, Crawley, Hartlepool, Ipswich and Port Vale (though Vale may get there yet this season). Stockport County I don't think have been there either, plus perhaps whoever wins that play off (it's at West Ham this year). Only team in the top 44, and one of only two teams with any sort of presence and success in the domestic game is quote some going from Rovers!

It is genuinely admirable that we aren't accepting gambling sponsorship. I agree we should make more of a deal of this, but I can understand a reluctance in case we ever need to go back on it (I hope not!).

Received mine this week as well, which was a nice surprise as I had no idea one was due! Superb read again, plenty of laugh out loud comments too.

My skepticism with data is that if you fed Tugay into a Spreadsheet we'd never have touched him in a million years. As it transpires, he was probably the greatest foreign player ever to grace Ewood in spite of all the things he couldn't or wouldn't do. I accept that data can be useful and will doubtless have uncovered some gems to buy or weaknesses to exploit, but at the end of the day, there is only one metric which counts. Two decades from now nobody will look back at a fixture and see 'they had 67% possession, a superior xG and an overwhelming victory in the aerial duels stakes', they'll see we lost 1-0 and subsequently attained zero points that day. It's the same with players - people remember Brad Friedel as one of our finest keepers ever, Craig Short as an absolute unit and whoever else as whatever else. No one will ever say 'Well, that Harry Pickering lad back in the day once successfully completed thirty passes over fifty yards in six matches'...

I can't understand why people do it, I'm very much of the opinion that I'm there for myself, there for the moment, I'm the same with concerts. I get a couple of pictures of the ground if it's a new one for me but other than that my phone stays in my pocket unless I'm checking scores if there's a stoppage or whatever. There's a couple of other things for me too - firstly, it goes nowhere near recreating the atmosphere / circumstances that it takes place in - I've just watched that video sat as my (WFH!) desk, a day later, with no connection to any of the teams involved; to that extent it's utterly meaningless really. Secondly, who actually watches stuff like that back? In all my years following Rovers I have maybe looked back at footage from 1995, Cardiff, and random odds and ends that pop into my head - Andy Todd booting Christophe Duggary for example. I'd go as far as to say I'm not actually interested about watching highlights from inconsequential matches more than a game after they happen. Still, probably got a couple of social media likes, so it's all grand.

Indeed. Andy Todd would have been in the crowd having a scrap with those fans keeping the ball a few minutes ago. Lenihan and Johnson are perhaps the only two of that ilk we have, and even then I'm not sure about Darragh.

Was having a dig through various books and magazines on this and can't find anything more helpful than the map and drawing of Leamington Street already posted, though apparently Leamington Street became Leamington Road in 1900. One thing I didn't know though is that apparently Rovers left Alexandra Meadows in March 1881 and completed the season 'in a temporary home close to Ewood Bridge', before moving back across town to Leamington Road, which was laid out in the summer immediately prior to the 1881/82 season. I was having a look too for any mention of Pleasington Cricket Club, even on old maps, but I can't find a thing.

Not wanting to go off topic but what happened with that FA Cup Final? I have seen a lot of mention of it on here but had never heard about it until I started reading this message board. (In my defence, it was well before my time!)

I honestly feel totally indifferent about the entire job with Newcastle. Much like the Europeam Super League proposals, this is just the next natural stop along the road we've been on for three decades or so. Next it'll be Liverpool v. Man United being played in Florida because money, or flogging actual team names for sponsorship (Amazon Aston Villa v. GSK Fulham anyone?). I fell out of love with elite level football a long time ago for precisely these reasons. I similarly wish I was surprised that people are more concerned with the transfer gossip they can now be involved in, than the truly abhorrent skeletons in the open, let alone the closet, their new owners now have. In this post-Venky world we all like to imagine, I would genuinely rather us be skint and all into obscurity in the North West Counties with not a thing to call our own than have what Newcastle have just landed. You get nothing if you gain the world at the cost of your soul.

Queen's Park, that'll be one of our 1880s FA Cup exploits! (Some great nicknames let alone team names up there - Honest Men, Red Lichties, Doonhamers... One of the things I have always wished Rovers had was a genuinely distinctive nickname. We obviously claim Rovers as our own, but I wish we had one that could be applicable to use and us alone. Something to do with our past industry as a town or glories as a club maybe.)