I liked Statham a lot but Kenny Sansom was a better player mate. The three best left backs playing for England in my time Ray Wilson, Kenny Sansom, Ashley Cole. Statham would get a game these days without a doubt.

That's right, Arsenal were top and we were second in the old First Division. Reg Blore came into the side in place of Andy McEvoy who moved over to play in Dougies place. Andy played so well that day we never missed Bryan. He was a very under rated player. Big Fred ran them ragged that day but his first goal was a fluke. He had a shot at goal but he kicked the ground as well. It was a real pea roller, it must have bounced about 5 times. Jim Furnell was in goal for Arsenal and he let it roll right through his legs. He could have stopped it by throwing his cap on the ball ! Joe Baker got Arsenal's first minute goal.

Green and Suddick were top class players. Tommy Hutch had a trick when he was running with the ball at speed were he would appear to over run the ball but bring it through with his trailing leg. It worked every time, even watching in the stands I fell for it. Even International class full backs like Keith Newton struggled against him. I've never seen any other player do it. Both Tony Green and Hutchinson came down from Scotland for very small fees. They had another class act called Pat Quinn a season or two earlier who came down from Scotland but he only stayed a season. He could run the show given half a chance.

We were playing Arsenal once and we set off moving from the Darwen End when we realised that Rovers were playing towards the Blackburn End. I'd only got as far as being in line with our penalty area walking along the Riverside when Arsenal scored ! It must have been in the first minute or two. Happily we won that one 4-1 with a Big Fred hat trick. That was when the big clubs started paying attention to Fred !

According to Mike Jackman's book the earliest we played Burnley in any season that Adam Blacklaw would have been playing was October the 1st. I went to two Burnley v Rovers night matches in that era. In one we were never at the races and lost 3-0 with Mike England getting an early bath after losing his rag with Andy Lochead and in the other we lost 1-0 to a Gordon Harris penalty. Fred Else gave a Brad Freidel style performance in goal, the best I ever saw him play. It could have easily been 4-0 or so. He even got a hand to the pen but couldn't keep it out. I don't remember the bottle incident but that's not to say it didn't happen.

Derek Statham was a class act at left back, bags of pace, liked a tackle and he was decent going forward. I liked him a lot.

When I was playing you could see the floodlights at Spotland from our home ground. We kicked off at 2-30 and we'd shower off and dash up to the game in the cars to get there just as they opened the gates to let fans out. We'd normally get the last 15 minutes. We were football daft. I remember seeing Alan Gilliver playing for Brighton after he left Rovers.

Not always. In central midfield you usually have the space to go both ways. Out on the wing sometimes the touchline isn't your friend.

I loved Speedie, my sort of player. He'd give you 110% every game, he didn't know any other way of playing. Craig Skinner and Wilcox on the wings. Tony wasn't messing about with the wide striker bollocks was he ?

That's how you start a game !

I remember that game from TV, West Brom were awesome. Cunningham and Regis put Utd to the sword. I think a Manchester lad I remember playing against as a kid, Len Cantello, played for West Brom that day in central midfield..

I'm really talking about team sports. We still didn't win the Ashes back, that's the one that matters, tip and run cricket suits our mentality. Look at the Rugby Union World Cup final, the Springboks walked all over us. Same in Rugby League, we've not beat the Aussies in the Ashes for 40 years !

If you're looking for reasons why the senior teams always seem to fail when the chips are down I would suggest that our collective mentality isn't where it should be. If you can't get your priorities right as a young sportsman you're never going reach your true potential. It's not just the football teams either.

Another thing that was great then was you could just walk on to 99% of games. Football was really accessible. Like I said earlier we'd decide at Saturday dinner time which game we were going to and just jump on the bus or train to wherever we fancied. For kids It was really cheap as well. I've been to 4 games in a week with my paper round money. Most weeks I'd go to two games. The coach firms in Rochdale were always running coaches to random games. I'd be going home from school past their booking offices and I'd see a coach going to England U-23's v Yugoslavia U-23's at Old Trafford, buy a ticket, dash home for some tea and then off to the game. It was a great time to be a young football fan. Imagine a Rochdale coach firm running a coach to a Blackburn V Spurs night match these days !

I saw him playing for City when he was just starting out. He was pretty quick as well as tricky then. At Rovers he was a classic example of you only needing to get half a stride in front of the full back to get a good cross in. Like Grealish did last night for England's first goal.

That Liverpool game in the early Sixties when they invaded the pitch was the first time I'd seen anybody " Steaming ". About 20 to 30 Scouse teenage lads just piled into a little sweet shop near the ground and they came out loaded up with Kit-Kats and Mars bars etc, they must have emptied it !

The first time I went to Old Trafford I " Migrated " from one end to another at half time. No problem. A 3-0 win with another Bryan Douglas midfield masterclass. In the relegation season of 1965-66 we got a 2-2 draw there. I was in the end opposite the Stretford End ( Scoreboard End then ? ) with the rest of the Rovers fans. Rovers got a corner and whilst everybody was waiting for it to be taken I saw one of those old dimpled pint glasses come sailing out from the back and it lands on the cross-bar ! Of course it shattered into loads of pieces of glass. The game was held up whilst the ground staff cleared the pitch. Nobby Stiles had to be held back by other players from going into the crowd to find out who had thrown it ! All the Rovers fans were telling him to " Come and get us " ! We were really poor that day and with about 10 minutes left we were 2-0 down and going nowhere. We eventually got a corner and as it came over the Utd keeper made a bee line for Mike England and just punched him in the head with the ball nowhere near. I think something had been going on throughout the game. He didn't wait to be sent off, he just started walking off right away. Of course it was an obvious pen which Mike Harrison slotted away as per usual. From being 2-0 down it was 2-1 and a man up, game on all of a sudden. With about 5 minutes left Paddy Crerand tripped Harrison about 30 yards from goal out on the left. Free kick. Crerand made the fatal error of walking away from the free kick with his back to the ball. Harrison tried to take the free kick really quickly before he was fully standing. He miss kicked the ball slightly and it hit Crerand on the back of his shoulder and looped gracefully over David Herd in the United goal. Hilarious. We'd really robbed a point. I was very quiet on a coach full of angry Mancs on the way back to Rochdale.

The first time I saw Gillespie was when he was playing in a pre season friendly at Rochdale. It was Utd res v Rochdale 1st team. Beckham, Scholes, Butt, the Neville's were all playing. You could see they were good players but Gillespie was head and shoulders above any of them. It was like watching George Best all over again. He was really quick, had terrific foot speed with the ball, he could go either way and he was very direct. A left full backs bad dream. He really missed his way.

I think it did, It certainly did at Rochdale. When I went to a neutral " away " ground I wasn't particularly bothered about which team I watched so I tended to pick a spot and stay there. I believe the term for it was " migration ". The first time I saw it disregarded was a game against Liverpool. Their lot had all been in the Blackburn End for the first half and at half time they all climbed over the boundary wall en masse and made their way directly down the pitch to take over the Darwen End ! There was always trouble when we played them. I was in the Blackburn End behind the goals in one game were we'd just taken a 3-2 lead after being 0-2 down at one point. A Rovers fan near me was celebrating enthusiastically when a really old guy stood next to him, who was obviously pissed up, just turned around and head butted him. Then it all kicked off.

Much as I rated Bryan Douglas as a ball player when it comes to running with the ball Damien Duff took some beating. The thing about Dougie was he didn't have to run that fast, he was a magician, he could beat people at walking pace ! As a pal of mine said when he played with Bryan at Great Harwood - " He could beat you stood still Tyrone ". Scott Sellers was good. Start Ripley, Mike Ferguson, Stuart Metcalfe in his youth, all were great to watch. Mike Harrison wasn't a dribbler but he was a tremendously hard running and direct winger.

I was about 12 when I first started going on my own to Ewood. There was a group of much older teenage girls that I used to see on the Riverside. A few of them had hand knitted scarves, half in Rovers colours and half in Burnley colours, with the names of their favourite players picked out in contrasting threads, Peter Dobing, Ray Pointer etc. They obviously went to Ewood one Saturday and Turf Moor the next. Imagine that now. I had a group of about 5 mates who played for the school football team. All of us had teams we supported. Me Rovers, a pal Burnley, other two Everton and Blackpool, one lad 'City. After playing on Saturday morning it'd be " Where are we going this afternoon ? " We didn't bother going home to get changed or anything. We'd always go to a local game, Rovers, Bolton, Burnley, Utd, City, Bury, Oldham. I managed to twist their arms to come to Ewood pretty often. The team of the early 1960's was very easy on the eye for the neutral.

The fact that we had five young players missing from last nights game because they can't or won't follow simple guidelines speaks volumes for their levels of maturity." Do I want to play for England or go do I want to go to a birthday party ? Err , phone for a taxi the champagne's on me. "

We seem to have a problem in pushing on from those successes. Young players thinking they've already got it made ? We definitely don't seem to mature mentally like some foreign teams do.

Yeah, before the game. They ran around the running track with it to really good applause. First British team to win a major European trophy. It felt more of a British achievement then with a team full of English, Irish, Scots and Welsh players. We all identified more with British teams in Europe then. I remember watching the final, they absolutely hammered a very good Spanish team, Athletico Madrid ?, about 5-1. Spurs then were like Liverpool or City are today, full of class players. Everyone an international apart from the right back, Peter Baker. I always felt sorry for him but England caps had to be earned then and Jimmy Armfield was England's right back and captain at the time. After we'd let them parade the cup Rovers absolutely took them to the cleaners winning in a stroll. They'd no answer to our attacking play, We'd 3 young local lads playing 8,9,10 that night in Byrom, Pickering and Ferguson that were unstoppable. I remember walking away from the ground thinking " With those three up front the future is really bright ". Dougie was playing on the right wing for once so Danny Blanchflower probably thought he was in for a quiet night, until Fergie got running with the ball !

I wonder what Vilesinner would have made of Bryan Douglas if Rothwell is World Class running with the ball. I don't think there is a suitable adjective.