Long-term view: Confessions of a Blackburn gloryhunter
Date published: Wednesday 26th April 2017 7:25
Let’s just do a quick head-count of the Premier League winners. There’s Manchester United, with the elegant two-tone shirts and the winsome charm of a teenager declaring “look if you just give me £200million, once more, I swear I’ll never ask for it again”. And Manchester City, declaring same, but with more culture, and Chelsea, loveable old Chelsea, and Arsenal, a strange club where a majority of fans find themselves hoping that they don’t win the FA Cup and finish as low in the table as possible. Leicester City, the greatest of them all, who I admit I initially forgot. And that’s…no, hang on. Not quite it.
Should results go a not-particularly-unlikely way, this week will see a first – the arrival into the third tier of an erstwhile winner of English football’s biggest prize. I have a confession to make: Blackburn Rovers were my childhood glory-supporting club. I could have picked United but I’m too contrarian for that and it would just mean saying the same as everyone else; I was pretty fond of Newcastle but, bestowed with a glorious knack of timing, during the summer after Blackburn won the title, I decided they were the club for me. Early experiences included that heroic Champions League campaign, the highlight of which was David Batty fighting with Graeme le Saux. Some of the names from the group stage will stir the hearts and minds of football fans of a certain age, and are barely a whisper in European football these days: Ferencvaros, Rosenborg, Grasshoppers.
Domestically, I felt a strange loyalty to the Scottish contingent at Ewood Park, by which I mean that all-conquering mountainous blonde behemoth Colin Hendry and tricksy but earnest Kevin Gallacher were my favourite players. A few curiosities from the squad list for my debut season as a ‘fan’: A young Damien Duff who, when the pleasures of being a Rovers supporter became seriously thin on the ground, would become my favourite thing about them. And his compatriot Shay Given who, as the back-up keeper, never really caught my attention until he left; and then with the increasing horror that only a 10-year-old can feel, I realised he was miles better than anything we had at the club.
Shearer leaving hurt, and hurt because the sum he left for was so eye-wateringly new – a whole £15million. I realised even at that age that trying to stop it would be akin to trying to prevent a space shuttle from taking off. It’s cool, we got a good replacement: Martin Dahlin. Top scorer by the 98-99 season: Ashley Ward, he of the lustrous 90s floppy-hair look, with five. ‘We’ were relegated in a season I’m sure Daniel Storey remembers too, with a little more personality to that pronoun.
Good times were a-coming though! If by ‘good’ you mean, having crawled our way back into the Premier League, attempting to recreate the Cole-Yorke strikeforce approximately five years past its sell-by date, and adding Hakan Sukur and Egil Ostenstad also about five years past same. And we did win the Worthington Cup! And far more importantly, we added to our ranks the greatest player to ever wear the Blackburn shirt, or any football shirt, or any shirt of any kind. I speak of course of Brad Friedel.
Real sunshine was coming. It was asked recently on this site, a little churlishly for my tastes, whether any fan ever enjoyed their team being managed by Mark Hughes. I wave my hand with the vehemence of a drowning man. There was a mid-noughties period when the combination of Friedel, Samba, Ooijer, Tugay, David Bentley, Morten Gamst Pedersen, the South African cherry on the cake – and he did occasionally look a bit cake-like – Benni McCarthy, and Roque Santa Cruz, made us the best of the rest. The proper rest. Seventh. And they played some absolutely wicked football.
Soon that team – or the wraith-like remains of a team with a connection with the Premier League, however tenuous – will become history. Shortly the youngsters’ reaction to hearing they won the Premier League will be like when you are told by some MOTD commentator that Wolves or Burnley won the First Division; you cannot help but think, Jesus what was going on with all the other teams?
How did they get here? By having the misfortune of thinking that they’d been taken over by owners who were foreign and thus very keen to lavish all their oil wealth on them, but in fact were indeed foreign but came from the most hard-grind, nickels-and-dime-on-the-margins industry there is – the mass production of chickens. And were not at all keen on giving Blackburn their hard-earned poultry cash.
Instead, they gave them Steve Kean. You know that feeling you occasionally get when you just know, through and through, that you could do a better job than someone in football who you’re watching on TV? That was how every Blackburn fan felt about Steve Kean, including those in jail and those who’d recently submitted to a lobotomy to cure their mental demons. Boy does it suck, when one of those football coaches with the ‘dead man walking’ look joins your relegation battle. Middlesborough fans will currently recognise this, as will Wolves fans from the Terry Connor days.
I stuck with them a long, long way after my glory-hunting lanyard grew moth-eaten on its string, but as Steve Kean became Henning Berg became Michael Appleton became Gary Bowyer, all in the space of three years, all with a hunted look in their eyes, I realised that any interest I had left was faked. And the older you get, the less interested you become in faking interest.
I have fond memories of pretending for many years to whole-heartedly support my club, fashioning a quick and well-rehearsed story about my imaginary uncle from Lancashire, if anyone questioned my loyalty. Now, I support Manchester City for the English games and either Real Madrid or Bayern Munich for the Champions League. Just kidding – now I dig Premier League football despite how soullessly avaricious it is, love what Spurs and Atletico and still just about Dortmund can achieve with a team and not a collection of individuals, and support Northampton Town, because for quite a while I lived about eight minutes from their stadium.
I have to confess though – I only properly started going when they were on a mazy run where they didn’t lose once from December and were promoted as far-and-away League Two champions. I’m looking forward to the Blackburn game next season. Where’s my half-and-half scarf?
Toby Sprigings – follow him on Twitter
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