SG194 if you want to beat yourself up over Rovers season ticket sales then thats up to you....but if you want to convince the rest of us to don the sack-cloth and ashes at least try and come up with relevant facts not just spurious tittle-tattle.

SG194 get hold of an atlas and have a look where Ipswich is. You will notice that it is in a reasonably remote part of the country ie difficult to get to Old Trafford /Highbury/Anfield etc..etc. Notice also that it is the county town of Suffolk and as such is a centre of gravity for a relativly large population. Suffolk is also incredibly flat and as such does not lend itself to the geographicaly induced insularity and parochial prejudices prevelent in Lancashire valley towns. If you live in Suffolk and follow football you are more than likely going to follow Ipswich Town. Now imagine a Lancashire where only Blackburn Rovers existed and where all the inhabitants of the surrounding towns naturally looked to Blackburn as the regional capital.....is the penny begining to drop yet?

Just booked us on the 8:05am Ryanair flight from Manchester on the day of the game.....anybody else from here on that flight?

We visited the excellent Powerscourt gardens and stately home just prior to last years match. I could post you directions..... . For those that didn't get to Bray last year, and are sick of hearing people go on and on about it, well here is your chance. By the way who says the fan's forum doesn't work!

I'd take this a stage further and can honestly say I have come off Christie Park after watching the reserves get beat and felt more upset than I did last night. To me the last two weeks have felt like nothing more than a bit of light relief after the struggles of Rover's recent season. Why is this? Two reasons come to mind:- 1) People only have a finite amount of enthusiasm for anything. Some "choose" (I'm not sure how much an individual can control this choice) to divide it up equally (eg 50% club 50% country) others, myself included, divert almost all their enthusiasm to a single passion. The up side for persons who employ this last stratagy is that when things are going well they will be on a higher high (!) than those who spread their interests. Unnfortunately the converse also applies. 2) It seems hypocritical to empathise with a collection of players who, for most of the year, I nearly always wish to fail.

Any more information on how STs are selling? How long was the que on Saturday's 'claim your seat deadline'?

Idiot. Try telling that to the two Asian lads sat next to me. Never ever met them before but any onlooking stranger would have thought us kissing cousins when Steadhino dincked Howard. Anyway back to season tickets. I think it's about time the club employed the stick rather than the carrot. Next season they should allocate one game (preferably high profile) as a season ticket holder only game. That might make some of our potential waverers think again.

This one combines drinking, traveling and Johnny Stead.......what more do you need! Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago, AND THERE'S ONLY ONE JOHNNY STEAD!

Just wondering if this seasons form has anything to do with the reshuffle involving Saunders and Borsema (Sp) during the summer?

When playing abroad we usually meet up in the local Irish bar.

Connelly St. It's this station that those stopping in Dublin can catch the DART to Bray.

Anybody else going by ferry (Tue 5th Fastferry from Holyhead)? If you are, how about a Guinness or three?

Managers come and go; players come and go; board members come and go; but what remains depressingly consistent over the years is Rovers ability to alienate potential supporters when exposed to the national media. It was noticable to me yesterday in the office where I work (not in B'burn) that most neutrals were Blackburn sympathisers and talked in terms of how 'WE' would do tonight. Today all the talk was of how embarrasing 'YOU' were last night. It's only a small point but nevertheless once again the Rovers have missed an opportunity. I hope that the club maximised it's financial potential from last nights fixture because it looks like for the immediate future we are stuck with the fans we already have.

Completly and utterly humiliated both on and off the pitch -Part 1. .............Tune in on Sunday for Part 2. Bloody devastated.

I know....they could lop-off the upper tier on the three new stands and hey presto!... a ground commensurate with our attendances and all in propotion and pleasing on the eye to boot!

Just imagine how many more of these w*****s there would have been if we had relaxed the ticket restrictions as some people have suggested. By the way Waggy I will mind if some Celtic fan is sat next to me; much rather an empty seat.

For those of you who quite obviously are 'up for a bit' of mass infiltration make a note of Sunday 17th November in your diarys. Everton have already sold their allocation of 5,000 and there ain't no restrictions on bying tickets for this one. Anybody who is critical of Rovers big game ticketing policy should come back and debate their point after that match.

The 'reviewing ticketing policy' statement refers to the way tickets are allocated and has nothing to do with how many tickets Celtic were willing to give us. I believe that the database should record the season ticket account number of every fan puchasing an away ticket. In this way a points system could be devised in which the loyal away fans are justly rewarded. I will be bringing this issue up at the next Fans forum. As an aside to this I must compliment the club on the way they handled the queing arrangements on Sunday night/Monday morning. I arrived at midnight, and was immediatly offered a warm drink by the attendant stewards. They proceeded to repeat this offer several times during the night. Opening the B'burn end concourse was a life saver and employing the stewards on overtime for a night was a gesture the club need not have made.

While the database will prove of great use over time a more accurate 'litmus test' of un-corruptable Rovers support was Saturday's attendance. In my opinion there are probably less than 20,000 loyal Rovers fans who would not be tempted by a fistfull of scottish funny money.

As I explained in the second part of my post above Celtic hold all the aces. Ok, imagine the scenario where Rovers tell Celtic they are only getting 1500 unless they budge on the Parkhead quota. If I were part of the Celtic negotiating team I would just shrug my shoulders and call the Rovers bluff secure in the knowledge that most of the tickets in the Darwen End would end up in Celtic fans hands anyway if Rovers tried to spread their support to thinly. We just have to face that this is a no win situation for Rovers. Celtic know that we do not have the strength in home support to force their hand over our allocation at their place, end of story.

Can anybody explain to me in simple terms why Celtic would feel the need to give us anymore than the minimum 5%allocation. It would make no sense at all when they could sell the same tickets to their own fans a hundred times over. Just think about it slowly, it's not rocket science. The ticket situation for the Ewood leg is a whole different card game in which Rovers don't hold any aces, and will have been advised by several bodies including the Lancs Police to give a whole end to one of the most fanatical and numerous sets of fans on what is for them a 'must see game'. It's a similar scenario to Rovers drawing Darwen in an FA cup 3rd round tie at The Anchor Ground and the Darwen board debating whether they should give Blackburn half or a complete end behind the goals!

Tom Finn has just been on Radio Lancs claiming that Rovers were never offered the so called 'Rangers allocation' ie 7500. He also stated that initially Celtic did not even want to give Rovers the minimum 5%! Apparently when Rovers asked if there was a possability of more than 3,000, Celtic claimed they had already sold a number of the 'Rangers allocation' to their own fans, so it was never a possability that Rovers would be offered any more. Finally he stated that the club was going to review it's ticketing policy for future 'big away games' and hoped to introduce a scheme whereby loyal away fans were rewarded. Unfortunatly, in this case, it looks as if 'the stable door has been shut after the horse has bolted!'

The B'burn end concourse IS opening from 11:30 tonight. Although I went to Sophia I still have to que for some family tickets. Three of us aiming to be there from midnight. I'll be the one on the pink deckchair (it's the wife's honest!) if anybody want to come for a chat.

People have got to realise that BRFC are in a unique position regarding ground capacity. Most clubs 'grow' their ground capacity to meet actual demand whereas Ewood was purpose built with a large over-capacity. This is why we have the arguments about ticket allocations whenever a 'big' team comes to town. Just suppose Ewood only held 22,000, then based on our attendances over recent times we could have quite happily given Celtic 1,000 tickets and said 'take it or leave it' reasonably sure that those Rovers fans who had a ticket would not be the type to flog it. This is unfortunatly not the case. If Rovers attempted to sell upto 30,000 to home fans do you honestly think that 'half hearted-once a season-big game' Rovers fans would be sitting in their allocated seat that they had payed £20 for when some desperate Celtic fan will be offering upwards of £100 on the night. In my view games like this are not the ones to experiment with growing the supporter base. Games like tomorrows (Newcastle), or if we where to meet one of the European giants like Bayern Munich should be the games we are encouraged to 'bring a friend', confident that these tickets would not be sold on.