Bugger! I was just about to mention that Furphy also took Terry Garbett as well as Dave Bradford (the first £1m player…not) and Tony Field. I can’t think of a better preview. Excellent work!

First game for a while and, despite the disappointment of letting Coventry back into it, I thought it was an entertaining ninety minutes, especially the latter part of the second half. Both teams went for the winner and it was reminiscent of a cup tie. We have a squad of very good players and the odd tweak here and there, coupled with a new, young, dynamic manager, could see us going places. If only we had someone of the calibre of Jack Walker around the place. Not from a finance point of view, just someone with the foresight to realise how little could be required to get to the next level. Very frustrating.

Yeah, can see it now, versus Everton at Highfield Road on Match of the Day. Just seen the clip a few posts back!

A bit like Leeds. No one had heard of them until the mid 1960s, neither of them having won a trophy of note either. I went to the game at Ewood in March 1967, not long after I’d started going to watch the Rovers. The Sky Blues won 1-0 and I think there were 26k on. We had just come down from the top flight and Coventry went up at the end of the season with Wolves. For several seasons after they were promoted, Coventry struggled but managed to avoid relegation, each time, by the skin of their teeth. I had a soft spot for them with relatives on my aunty’s side coming from Coventry. They had a very good side in the early 70s (Bill Glazier, Mick Coop, Dennis Mortimer, Jeff Blockley, Ernie Hunt, Willie Carr, Neil Martin & John O’Rourke amongst others) and they actually beat Bayern Munich 2-1 at Highfield Road, in a European game but were trounced in the away leg. I remember watching Coventry away, around that time, at both Turf Moor and Maine Road. Nice memories.

With Armstrong gone, he has had to step up to the plate and he’s grown in confidence and done well so far. For the first couple of seasons, at least, he was utter tripe. Not my description of a talented player. Since then, however, and to his credit, he has turned things round. Not quite ‘made it’ yet Chaddy.

Let’s get a bit of perspective here, Brereton has most certainly not yet ‘made it.’ He showed glimpses last season of what just may be round the corner and this season he has continued to improve. Prior to that, the opinion of most Rovers fans was that it was a damned long time since we had seen such a poor player. Let’s be honest, he was poor with a capital P. A friend of mine went in corporate, not long after we had signed him from Forest. That game was against Forest and a couple of their fans couldn’t believe the fee they had secured for him, given his abilities, or lack of them. They thought it was their best bit of business for years. The fact that he has (so far) turned things around is superb. We all want the best for the player, whichever player, and the best for the club. The problem is, it’s only October. He could lose form, suffer a serious injury, get dropped or whatever. In my opinion, if he scores 18-25 in the Championship, two seasons running, we will have a valuable player on our hands and he will have gone some way to ‘making it.’ Unfortunately, I can see his head getting turned. Agents and all that, people on the make. Money, money, money. Should he finish this season with a tally like I’ve mentioned, I can well see him then ending up at a Watford or a Southampton and it all ending in tears. No, he’s not made it yet but, as we all do, I wish him well.

Me and a mate did the same when we had a summer job at Ewood in July 1974. We had a great time painting the crush barriers and repainting some of the adverts that had got worn. Didn’t see many of the first team, it was mainly the apprentices and I can remember John Bailey being a right character. Can also remember a decent stash of porn mags. You don’t forget those things when you are sixteen. I’ve told this story before on some other nostalgia thread but, one day, there was a yellow JCB digger on the pitch near the half way line. The nets had been removed. My mate got in and started it up. It must have been in gear because it shot off heading for the Darwen End. My mate panicked, couldn’t stop it as it weaved its way towards the perimeter wall, behinds where the nets would have been. It left big tyre marks in the turf and finally stopped when it rammed into the wall with its back wheels spinning on the shale track. Under normal circumstances, we would have been sacked on the spot (and probably taken a couple of back handers) but my mate was the son of the then Commercial Manager and we (or at least he) got off lightly. Great memories.

You’re right. I’d take it as well.

As I mentioned (probably this thread) a couple of weeks ago, my lad had a tenner on at 1000 to 1. He has had his offer of £5000 to cash out…

Just looked at Beunlah’s fixtures for the remainder of October and November and can’t see many points coming their way. Won’t be long.

Hope so, John. May just get a couple of pints coming my way.

Wouldn’t create any sort of atmosphere at Ewood. When the singers relocated there, during the last few seasons of our PL days, instead of sitting up next to the fence next to the away fans, to create some atmosphere/banter, they all positioned themselves as far from the away fans as they could get. Under the Radio Rovers studio, you couldn’t make it up, can’t think of any other fans, anywhere, that would have done that.

My lad has £10 on him to score 20 goals this season, at 1000 to 1. 17 to go.

An excellent piece. As he says at the end, he had twenty years playing, twenty years coaching and then almost twenty years in the media. Yes, he was lucky but, at the same time, cream rises to the top and that’s one of the reasons that he’s been right up there for that length of time. I know a few ex work colleagues who are Burnley fans, who are quick to take the p!ss at our current predicament. The Clarettes are in their seventh PL season and apart from a couple of very good keepers, they’ve had barely a good outfield player in that time. All bread and butter journeymen footballers, nothing more. My reply to them would be Dunny, Duffer, Berg, Short, Jansen, Hughes, Cole, Friedel and so on. Despite our rise to the top and winning the League during the Dalglish years, I think I enjoyed the Souness years just as much because there was a nice blend of experience and youth, with the latter having come through our academy when you include players like Tiny Taylor and Damien Johnson. Well worth the listen if anyone is still thinking about it. I think Graeme had a tear in his eye at one point. I certainly did.

I’ve not even mentioned the riches of the vastly improved tv deals that came along only a few seasons after we were sold. TV deals that have meant clubs like Burnley have been able to maintain a presence at the top table with relative ease.

‘In it for the long haul’ normally implies owners who are willing to put their heart and soul into a club (or any other business, for that matter) and stay involved for as long as it takes, to either maintain standards or improve them. This set of uninterested, absent landlords have done the exact opposite, have relegated us twice and put us in a position where our standing in the Championship is looking frail to say the least. We are only going in one direction and it’s not an upward trajectory. Protect Jack’s legacy? What a fucking joke! And a question you posed earlier about where would we be if we had run them out of town. The answer is probably still in the Premier League. We were an attractive, stable, relatively successful, family run PL club with state of the art training facilities and a supporter base of 20-22k, most of whom were season tickets holders. The Walker Trust sold us down the river and got rid to virtually the first buyers who appeared on the scene. Given time, they could (and should) have found more suitable buyers and certainly ones who would have upheld that legacy.

Probably a good half, or more, of our present fan base think Venky’s are a good thing. ‘Where would we be without them?’ comes the whine…’Nobody will buy us,’ comes the whimper. Well have a look at little Wigan Athletic then. Almost relegated from League One. Selling all their best players after going into Administration. Almost lost their ground. Tiny fan base. Surprise, surprise, somebody has bought them. Who would have thought it? These things don’t happen. Well, that’s what the bleaters of Blackburn think. Wigan now sold 6k season tickets as a L1 club, and they have only been on sale for three weeks. If Venky’s aren’t kicked out (and they won’t be, our passive supporters have already proved they haven’t the stomach for a fight), the status quo will remain. Except, it won’t be a status quo because there will be a downward trajectory. Until Venky’s leave, we are only going in one direction and our crowds will continue to diminish accordingly. If we aren’t already, we’ll become the laughing stock of the Lancashire town clubs. We had the chance to do something about it but fecked it up.

You’re not far behind Andy 😉😆

😆 I keep in touch via one or two Facebook sites Tony, so I’ve seen the pictures.

If you can’t see Darwen Tower, it’s raining. If you can see Darwen Tower, it’s about to rain. 😆

Corporate speak for, “we know we don’t have enough people answering the phones but we don’t give a feck.”

As a guide to the level of crowds we may now expect to see at Ewood, I am currently in my twenty first season of following Wigan Warriors. The attendances at Wigan, on the whole have been pretty good, ranging from 10k or so when we play an average to poor team with a small following to a full house of 25k, when we play St Helens on a Good Friday. The last few seasons have seen a gradual decline in numbers, for a variety of reasons but I have never experienced a sub 10k crowd, for a league game, in all that time. Friday night’s game against Wakefield (who brought 25-30 fans) drew an extremely poor crowd of 5,555. 😢

NM the goalkeeper..

I’ll keep you in mind pal. I am hoping to sell them as a ‘job lot’ and not individually. Just give it a bit longer and, if I have had no takers, I’ll fire it over to you.

Great piece. I’ve slated him (like most Rovers fans on here have) but fair play to the lad. Looks like he had a great game, took his goal well, put himself about and ran himself into the ground. Will have done his confidence a world of good and, not least, his value will have appreciated. Maybe not beyond £7m but who knows?