Sham effort on painful day in the Rovers return

WITH a late kick-off at Blackburn on a Bank Holiday Monday, I assumed there wouldn’t be a train back to London that night.

Nor could I find anyone else mad enough to accompany me on an eight-hour road trip in the motor, for such a meaningless encounter. The appalling levels of apathetic end-of-seasonitis evident elsewhere, in matches where there was much more to play for, didn’t exactly hold the promise of an entertaining reward at the end of an exhausting Ewood Park rainbow.

Up until recently, Ewood Park was the only ground in the Premiership, where one could obtain a cash refund on unused tickets. Sadly Rovers have wised up since. Otherwise there’d have been a long queue of Gooners at the box office on Monday, wanting refunds for all their mates who’d had the sense to stop at home.