Braced for what could be the best Red week of the century

ONE spends much of any season these days complaining about the grim plastic fraud of the modern game but every now and then you get an afternoon like last Saturday to keep you hooked nonetheless. Ewood Park was everything you want the football experience to be about: a fittingly throbbing start to what could be the best Red week of the century.

Yep, Blackburn was a jaw-clenching, jugular-pulsing, pant-moistening nerve-fest. (With 50 hothead arrests before and after to boot). The true fan loves these games that aren’t going well, yet where everything is at stake; the crowd simultaneously seeking to support, criticise, howl in frustration, and spleen-vent at the smirking opposition. Here us roar, hear us growl. To reword the Duke of Wellington, they frighten us as well as them.

The team and fans begin to overcome, and those oppos’ smirks turn to fearful frowns: then it’s the race against the clock, the almost savage artillery-smash of chances exploding right in front of our Darwen End, with spectacular defensive resistance finally beaten down at the death.