Starman Field gave us glam
BLUE EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
YOU have to find something to do to fill the international breaks and on Tuesday evening, though I’d probably sooner have been watching Rovers battle to a dour win over Birmingham or someone, I found myself in the splendour of Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall as the only surviving Spider From Mars.
Woody Woodmansey and his Holy Holy band took us on a nostalgic trip back to the early 1970s with a full run-through of the fabled Ziggy Stardust LP and many other Bowie classics from the glam rock era.
Glamour was actually in quite short supply at Ewood Park in the early years of that particularlyrevered decade.
Rovers fans had to get used to the prosaic and harsh double-denim meat and potatoes reality of playing in the Third Division of English football almost as soon as the decade began.
When Bowie released the single, largely ignored until an epiphanic summer Top Of The Pops showcase, which was to blow our minds and begin to open up new worlds, our only real “Starman” was a bearded, swarthy, dark-eyed handsome ball of energy lower-league journeyman forward named Tony Field.
Field would, the following year, mark Elton John’s first ever visit to Ewood with a goal so stunning in a 5-0 victory over Reg’s beloved Watford that manager Ken Furphy, who left for Sheffield United a week later, whipped him away to Bramall Lane to play in the top division after a couple of months in the job.
It was possible to weave dreams from modest beginnings back then and just as a trio of Hull bluesrock men found themselves peroxided and clad in satin and bacofoil tat to back Bowie, Field was followed to Blades by a couple of our better players.
It took four years to regain our full membership of the Football League in the 1975 of Young Americans and much druggy Bowie madness, a footballing status we only once more ever briefly surrendered for a single season, 1979-80, by which time the decidedly un-adrogynous Howard Kendall had nonetheless turned us Romantics.
After seven games unbeaten under the extremely likeable, sensetalking Tony Mowbray we have only really trod water in terms of our current league position yet despite the fact that the first two of our remaining eight games are away to sides with a genuine eye on promotion, there is undoubted heart and hope that a third spell in lower-league ignominy can be avoided.
Effectively, what we probably have to do is move up one place to fourth in a six-team minileague.
We will probably need the hard currency of at least three wins from the eight fixtures to survive.
While the sequence under the new manager has undoubtedly raised flagging spirits in the dressing room and galvanised support from the stands, it’s one of the foibles of football that we would have actually been a lot better off table-wise winning two and losing two of the last four.
Eight draws would make it a remarkable 15-game run (and almost certainly a record for a new gaffer?) but it could into Blue also see us relegated by a couple of points.
Even sides which have struggled all season habitually produce a couple of “if only they’d done it earlier” results towards the end of a campaign.
Rotherham of course are an irrelevance and Wigan would have to win three in pretty immediate order to avoid becoming similarly marooned.
Both those clubs have wealthy local backers and pretty much have genuine fans running the show, a situation many current Rovers refuseniks say would immediately lure them back to full commitment at Ewood. I wonder.
However well-intentioned and popular you start off in running a football club so much is dependent on the managers you choose and the players he signs. Much of the rest is cheap talk and irrelevant periphery.
One hopes that the “freak result” syndrome also applies, as often it does, at the other end of the table.
Brighton have suffered in this regard over the weeks and are hugely relieved that Huddersfield, Reading themselves and Sheffield Wednesday have been similarly afflicted as well as grateful for the fact that their excellence under Chris Hughton had given them a considerable cushion.
We know from some outstanding spells in recent games that Rovers have the personnel to exploit any nervous trepidation on the part of home teams and fans who stumble or choke with their eye on the prize – how many times in bygone years did a larger-than-average crowd turn up at Ewood when the breakthrough seemed within 90 minutes only for it to slip through our fingers?
I sometimes forget that you probably have to be fairly advanced in years, what, at least in your midto-late forties (maybe born, in the Ziggy/Aladdin Sane years) to have ever seen Rovers play in the third tier?
I don’t particularly want to see it again (although like most who stuck it out last time I will if I have to) and I hope the younger fans never get to sample it.
Let’s hope on Tuesday night we look at the watch, it says nine twenty-five and we think, “Oh God, we’re still alive.”
If you think we’re gonna make it, better hang on to yourself!
KATERINA LEE’S CLARETS VIEW
THIS weekend we finally return to Turf Moor after what feels like a lifetime away.
Let’s face it, it’s time to start embracing that we probably won’t get more than a point on the road and if we stay up with only home wins, perhaps that’s a feat all in itself.
Our first match back at the fortress after four away isn’t going to be easy though.
We host an extremely in form Spurs whom are pushing for the league title.
They may not have Harry Kane, who is still out injured, but they most certainly have Dele Alli and Erikson who are not going to make it an easy match for us.
One thing that is always certain, we have a never say die attitude at home that is unrivalled by any team in the league at the moment, so if anyone is going to holt Spurs in their tracks this weekend, it theoretically would be us.
Look at how we treated Chelsea’s visit. If we could emulate that attitude this weekend, there will be a lot of very pleased Clarets.