A Quiet Easter at Ewood Park

Monday 18th April 2022: Easter Monday: Ewood Park: EFL Championship: Blackburn Rovers vs Stoke City

Having missed going to a Good Friday game due to other commitments I wanted to make sure I chose well for my Easter Monday match. I considered taking the direct train up to Bloomfield Road in Blackpool to see the seasiders take on Birmingham City and if I had I would’ve seen 7 goals as the hosts sauntered to a 6-1 win. I also looked at going to Salford City to see how their push for the League 2 playoffs went as they hosted Barrow AFC and there again I would’ve seen a great game. The hosts took the lead then went 2-1 down with 7 minutes to play only to score an 89th minute goal to equalise again and save a point for themselves.

Shrewsbury Town hosting Doncaster Rovers was another match that entered my considerations, but the travel to that one pushed it to the bottom of my list of possibilities. If the travel had been easier I would have gone to it and witnessed a thrilling 3-3 draw as the hosts threw away a 3-0 half-time lead to concede a 94th minute equaliser as the 3 points slipped through their fingers. The final unused option on my list was heading to Rochdale to watch their match against Hartlepool United which would have provided me with an awesome comeback for the hosts as they secured a 94th minute winner to send the home fans ecstatic with 3 points they never expected to get.

I didn’t go to any of those matches though as I chose instead to head out into the Lancashire Valleys to visit ex-Premier League champions Blackburn Rovers at their Ewood Park home as they took on Stoke City. This was a bad call in hindsight but the reason I went this way was that, having seen how Sheffield United’s play-off push is going last week, I wanted to see what Blackburn were doing to keep the pressure on those above them as they attempt to sneak into the play-offs.

Rovers started the day in 8th place 2 points outside of the fabled play-offs but their goal difference of 9 was enough to see them move up to 7th before kick-off, due to Middlesbrough’s 2-0 loss at home to Huddersfield in the day’s early game. Such results can have a huge effect on the play-off picture with just 5 points covering the field from 6th to 12th place at the start of the day.

Given the close nature of the play-off race it is incredible that Rovers remain in it with the way their recent form has been heading. They had not won for a month coming into this match, with that last win coming in a 3-1 demolishing of Derby County on 15th March. Their form showed no signs of turning round recently either as they have surrendered the lead in all 3 of their games so far in April.

They have only lost 1 of those 3 though, but that was their Good Friday match away at Peterborough United where they took the lead in the 77th minute only to throw away the win by conceding 2 goals in the final 10 minutes. The extenuating circumstances for that result though were that they had to play the whole of the second half as Edun was sent off for them in the 41st minute of that one and thus was not available for Tony Mowbray to include in his match squad for this one.

Stoke City for their part have nothing left to play for this season. They’re safely marooned in 15th place with another Championship season confirmed for them unless they win every one of their remaining matches and the teams above them all have their form drop off a cliff. They are 14 points clear of the relegation zone before kick-off with a maximum of 12 points available to the teams below them, whilst they have a 10 point deficit to the play-offs.

The Stoke players can put their feet up for the rest of the season if they so choose safe in the knowledge that they will be playing in the Championship once again next season. This mindset seemed to be in force in their match on Good Friday as they had slipped to a 1-0 loss to Bristol City. They had beaten West Brom 3-1 in their last away game though, so perhaps they weren’t all in their flip-flops yet.

My ticket was open to be used any time during the day and with it being Easter Monday I decided to take an earlier train than originally planned to ensure that I had wriggle room to make the kick-off if I ran into any unexpected delays. No such delays were encountered and I even arrived in Blackburn earlier than expected as when I joined the throng of people abandoning the train at Preston I found thatt I had more options to complete the journey than was originally advertised.

I was expecting to have to take the same slow train from Preston to Colne that had previously got me to Burnley, but this time I also had the choice of a quick train to York if I chose to spice up my journey. As this York train was 15 minutes quicker and left 12 minutes earlier I decided to take it and take my chances with even more time to kill pre kick-off in Blackburn. There were a smattering of other fans on my final train to Blackburn, but nowhere near the thousands I had expected to be descending on the village for the match.

Stepping out of the station I realised that I had not used the WiFi at Preston station well at all as I had no clue which way I needed to go to get to Ewood Park. After stumbling around the village for a while I managed to get my phone’s data working and work out a Google Maps route to the stadium. For those who want to get from station to stadium without getting lost it’s left out of the exit and then basically straight on till morning. Veer right at the fork of the huge roundabout, then right at the traffic lights, ignore the huge blue and white arched bridge that appears out of nowhere on your right, then hook a left once you have crossed the Leeds-Liverpool canal twice over and reached the Empire Theatre.

By the time I hooked this left I started to be joined by other fans and it was nice to see life did exist around here. The whole of Blackburn felt sleepy and I cannot fathom how they found the support from the sunny hills to propel them to winning the EPL back in the 1994/95 season. Even around the stadium itself that relaxed atmosphere persisted. The shop was both airy and welcoming, but completely of keyrings so I left without buying anything. Not before talking to the server behind the till who told me that “all programmes are now digital”, WHAT?

Seriously Blackburn, not to provide programmes to your fans as a physical memento of their match experience is a ridiculous call. Every other football team across the country provides physical programmes for their fans and with very good reason. It connects the fans to their experience of the match and gives them a physical reminder of the team that prompts them to buy more tickets to see them play again.

Also from a personal point of view I use them to make notes on the biggest moments of the match, not to mention ensuring that I have the correct starting 11 and substitute bench for both teams. Thus the lack of a programme was exceedingly frustrating. The only other match at which I have had to manage without a programme was during Brentford’s Stamford Bridge demolition job and that was down to the outside sanctions rather than any active decision by the host team.

Exiting the shop you are thrown straight into the fan zone area outside the ground, where some foreshadowing of what was to come reared its ugly head. The screen in this area was showing the end of the early kick-off between Middlesbrough and Huddersfield but the quality of this screen was abysmal and I could barely make out the players, let alone the team names or the score. Whilst trying to work them out the tannoy sparked into life and announced both team’s matchday squads at 1,000mph such that even with a programme I would have struggled to get even a single player noted down correctly.

Having escaped this area with the match still in motion and having stopped at the statue of Jack Walker ‘Rovers greatest fan’, I snuck down the side of the stadium which back into a babbling brook. This stand is called the riverside stand but there is no way that the waterway is anywhere near big enough to be considered a river. The river was the only sign of life on this side of the stadium though and as I emerged round to the Darwen stand end of the stadium the signs of life improved slightly, but only in terms of the police and ambulance people waiting to direct the fans that were yet to arrive. The plethora of car parks on this side of the stadium could accommodate the capacity of the stadium 5 times over but as things stood as I passed through the area it was so quiet you could hear a mouse whistle.

The Jack Walker stand side of the stadium was no busier than any of the others but there was at least a war memorial on this side. I stopped there to pay my respects to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country before heading inside to see if I could detect signs of life inside the stadium.

Getting inside the stadium was the only place where the onslaught of new technology helps as, now I’m used to how they work, E-tickets are a useful replacement for their paper equivalents. Much easier to keep track of and harder to lose, but where they don’t help in the slightest is when you need to be a size minus 2 to fit through the turnstiles. Squeezing through was not easy and for the instant reward to be a brick wall that you have to turn sharp left to avoid smashing into was extremely unexpected. Once you make it round the wall though the concourse was roomy and empty to the point that you could drive an articulated lorry down it without a problem.

I bought a hotdog and drink for the ridiculous price of £7.10, not as money-grabbing as Chelsea but still awful for something so simple. That secured however I then poured myself down the steps and then as far left as possible to take my seat in the second row just four spaces from the dugouts. At this point I noticed that many of the fans around me had printed team-sheets which they told me they had been given from the dugouts, but when I asked for one the dugouts told me they had no idea what I was talking about. As such I am grateful to the fan in-front of me who allowed me to have his.

The away fans were hidden away high above the goal away to my right in the top tier of the Darwen Stand, just to the left of the single stadium screen. They were making loads of noise before kick-off though which was in direct contrast to the morgue atmosphere in the home stands. There was a banner screen between the tiers of the Darwen Stand that transformed into a match clock and score indicator 10 minutes before kick-off.

The stadium screen came in useful when the tannoy sparked into life to announce the teams. Each team’s squad was emblazoned on the screen in list form as the announcer ticked through it at a normal speed this time. Announcing the teams was useless for the fans though as those with team sheets already had the match squads on hand and for those without these magic sheets they had nowhere to put this information.

Stoke were in moss green tops and black shorts, whilst the hosts were in their traditional half-white, half-blue strip. The managers for their part emerged after their teams had taken the field but took polarly opposed approaches to their dugout role. The visitors Michael O’Neill headed straight up to the edge of his technical area, whilst Tony Mowbray made sure to shake every hand he could find in the Stoke dugout before reclining on the wall that separated the Blackburn area of it from the tunnel.

Perhaps this difference in the manager’s approaches bled over onto the pitch as within 4 minutes the visitors had take the lead. Stoke rolled a ball through the centre of the hosts defence and then saw the ball rolled past the charging Thomas Kaminski before Jacob Brown stroked it home into the empty net. A simple goal to put the visitors 1-0 up and leave everyone in the home stands in a state of shock and apart from the party in the away end you could hear a pin drop anywhere else in the stadium. There was no announcement on the tannoy of the goal scorer, but the squad lists on the screen gave away the scorer with a little football appearing in place of the squad number next to Brown’s name.

Blackburn responded to going behind by stringing together a set of attacks that ensured they wouldn’t concede again, but neither did they look like forcing their visitors to concede either and the reason for this was as Mowbray said himself “tell him to put it into the box”. The hosts seemed completely allergic to threatening the visitors goal and the main culprit of this was their number 10, Tyrhys Dolan. He seemed to be the only host’s player able to keep the ball but he over complicated everything he tried to do with it allowing Stoke to recover their shape and nick the ball back. Only to do nothing interesting with it themselves. Having secured the lead they appeared content to simply spend the rest of the match soaking up anything that Rovers threw at them.

Not that they had much to soak up as their hosts alternated between passing the ball straight back to Stoke whenever they attempted to advance over the halfway line and sliding incisive passes through the visitors defence without anyone running onto it to secure the equalising tap-in. An excellent example of the second type of Blackburn play came in the 19th minute when Sam Gallagher took it upon himself to advance the hosts cause and after bursting through the centre of the pitch he tucked a slide-rule pass into the box. Unfortunately none of his teammates were in the same postcode as him and as such this brilliant build-up play went without the finish it deserved.

As play reached the halfway point of the half Blackburn finally managed a decent passage of play in the Stoke half and from this they gained a free-kick on the right-hand touchline. Josh Maya gave away the freekick when he snapped away the ankles of the advancing Blackburn player, then compounded this mistake by failing to retreat 10 yards from the spot of the freekick and picking up the first yellow card of the match.

It took until the half hour mark for the next yellow card to be issued and this one went to the host’s Scott Wharton who came steaming into a tackle in the centre circle. 4 minutes later Jan Paul Van Hecke picked up the host’s second yellow card of the match for what looked like a very weak challenge on a Stoke player who was looking to take a run at the host’s defence. There didn’t appear to be much contact at all and Van Hecke may have been given the card for his remonstrations with the ref for giving the call this way.

Perhaps that call played on the ref’s mind and stopped him collecting a second yellow just 4 minutes later, as he pulled down a Stoke player as they looked to turn and then complained to the ref for giving a freekick against him for the foul. Only the extreme clemency exhibited by the referee kept him on the pitch till half-time, when he was correctly removed from the action by Mowbray who sent on Joe Rothwell in his place for the second half.

In the final 5 minutes of the half Blackburn finally gave the home fans a crumb of encouragement as they headed in for the break. First a lofted ball over the top had to be snatched off the head of Dolan by Jack Bonham in the Stoke net, if Dolan was taller that ball would have caused the visitors real problems. Dolan turned provider in the 43rd minute as he fizzed a ball into Ben Brereton Diaz on the edge of the box. Brereton Diaz attempted to pass the ball straight to the feet of a defender, but luckily for the hosts the defender wasn’t paying attention and the ball landed back at their man’s feet. With this second chance he advanced into the box before cannoning the ball directly into Bonham’s grateful arms at the near post.

This was the closest either team had come to scoring since Stoke’s opener and as such the booing by the home fans was utterly deserved as the home team trudged down the tunnel to face the wrath of Mowbray at half-time. The hosts had barely managed to string together 2 passes in the final third all half and only Brereton Diaz’s chance had credibly threaten the opponent’s goal all half. Booing was the least the home team should have expected to endure at half-time.

I tried to find some joy at half-time by checking the concourse screens to console myself with the knowledge that I wasn’t missing anything incredible at any of the other matches I had considered going too. This did not work for me though as I was confronted with the fact that Blackpool had raced into a 3-0 lead in the first half at Bloomfield Road. Devastated is not a strong enough description of how I felt on discovering this news, but getting to Bloomfield Road before the second half there kicked off was not an option so I just had to stick it out at Ewood Park and hope against all the evidence that the second half would see a vast improvement in the spectacle on the field.

The only saving grace for me and those suffering through things with me was that at least things couldn’t get much worse in the second 45 that what we had witnessed in the first 45. This did not seem much to cling onto as the teams emerged for the second half, with the hosts out far in advance of their visitors, given the rumours swirling around me that Bradley Dack injured himself at halftime.

So the Blackburn bench was depleted but that didn’t stop them coming out on the front foot and attempting to force themselves level. They failed to create any chances of note though before their momentum was torpedoed by Maya going down holding his head in the 47th minute. He was up and ready to play again after 30 seconds of physio treatment but it was a long enough break to kill the hosts momentum.

By the 49th minute the cagey nature of the game meant that the fans were clinging at straws to find anything to get excited about. Imagine our joy then when Kaminski skied a clearance onto the roof of the Riverside Stand. Waiting with baited breath for the ball to drop down the slope and into the arms of a fan in the front row (great catch dude) was the most exciting action we’d seen for ages, there were ooo’s echoing round the stadium as we waited for the drop.

The action on the pitch turned incredibly cagey at this point and chances became at even more of a premium at this point of the match. Lewis Travis tried a volley from 30 yards out to equalise for the host but sent it high and wide, then Gallagher tried to do it himself. Single handily weaving his way through the visitors defence before having the ball knocked off his toes as he shaped to shoot.

Gallagher won a freekick on the left in the 56th minute when Tommy Smith pulled him to the floor as he turned to run in behind. Smith picked up a yellow card for this but the freekick was headed straight back the way it came in and clear of the halfway line. I doubt that was what the Blackburn player intended but that’s the way it went off his head.

These 3 incidents in as many minutes finally sparked the home fans into life creating a proper football atmosphere for the first time all day. The hosts finally produced something for the fans to buy into and the fans responded by doing their part to inspire the players to more. It did no good though as the next action of note didn’t occur until the 67th minute and it was a substitution to boot.

Mowbray took another stab at shuffling his pack to help them back into the game. Replacing Bradley Johnson with John Buckley in a heartfelt attempt to force his Rover’s team back into contention to take something from this match. This change almost bore fruit immediately when Buckley won a freekick that was taken quickly and worked brilliantly into the box but it was rolled towards goal like a slug ambling uphill and the hosts were able to hoof it clear. The ref decided to make all of this irrelevant though as he ordered the hosts to re-take the freekick. This one was easily cleared by the Stoke defence.

I noticed at this point that the substitutes were displayed on the screen with their number on the left of their name and on the right a little ‘(s)’ appeared next to their name so that anyone who had stepped out for a moment can easily spot who the newbie on the pitch is. That’s a lovely touch by Blackburn and it would help if other clubs would do similarly, on this singular point only.

Back on the pitch and Rovers really should have drawn themselves level in the 70th minute. A floated cross from the left was headed goalward by Gallagher from 15 yards out which looked to be sailing in till Bonham leapt up to tip it out to the left. The volley from there was always rising and though it eventually ballooned itself way over the bar this passage of play still represented the hosts best period of the match.

In an attempt to turn this threat into goals Mowbray committed to his final substitution of the match with 15 minutes still to play. He bought on Ryan Hedges in the place of the tireless but ineffective Dolan. O’Neill responded to this with a first change of his own in the 79th minute but the man he brought off was not the one every fan in the stadium was expecting.

Smith had gone down 2 minutes earlier and was still in the process of being tended too by the physios when the board went up but Romaine Sawyers was the man that was removed from the fray. He was replaced by Jaden Philogene-Bidace as the match ticked into it’s final 10 minutes to held Stoke see this one out for the 3 points.

They tried to do one better than that in the 81st minute as they came close to doubling their lead. Swinging a cross through the corridor of uncertainty that found Maya free at the back post for what seemed to be a simple tap in, but he was unable to turn it home. Luckily for him though the hosts wasted a golden chance on the break despite Bonham dropping the ball to allow them a second chance at the cherry. The cross back into the box was straight into his waiting arms at the near post though, so chalk that up as another wasted chance for the hosts.

Gallagher tried to take matters into his own hands one last time in the 84th minute, careering down the left wing before cannoning his curling shot off the bar and away. This was the final time Gallagher would try a personal attack on the Stoke goal. Perhaps finally coming so close broke his will to try again. The hosts took this as motivation to mount a concerted push on the visitors goal but it was too little too late, they would create one more chance though.

Before I get to that chance Stoke had a couple more noteworthy moments in the match that I ought to touch on first. The first of these happened in the aftermath of that Gallagher chance as O’Neill made his second and final substitution. This appeared to be more of a chance to waste some time more than anything tactical though as Josh Maya made his way off the pitch as though he was wading through Golden Syrup in the height of a Saharan summer’s day. When he eventually made it to the touchline Stephen Fletcher sprinted on in his place, maybe he missed the time-wasting memo.

Then in the 89th minute Stoke had a credible penalty shout turned down by the ref. Philogene-Bidace cannoned the ball off the hands of a Rover’s defender from a couple of yards away and whilst the defender’s limbs were in an unnatural position the speed of the ball and the point blank range that it hit him from gave him no chance to get them out of the way. It certainly goes under the ‘seen them given’ category of penalty shouts but it would absolutely have been soft.

Blackburn were given 4 minutes of added time to find the equaliser their second half improvement deserved and they came so close to doing so through a cross from the left. The cross was stretched for at the back post and directed towards goal, but once again Bonham was on hand to palm the ball clear. It dropped to a Rovers player at the near post but their snatched shot rippled the net of the side netting rather than the parts of the net that counted. That was THE chance for Rovers to equalise and also the last action of the match as the ref blew the final whistle as Bonham lumped his goal kick upfield.

I almost wrote on my team sheet that the match had ended 0-0 as it had been so long since the goal was scored and there had been little else to cheer all match, but thankfully I noticed the ‘G’ in my notes and realised that someone must have scored. Despite this realisation I was still mightily unimpressed when I checked the concourse screens on my way out and saw that the crowd at Bloomfield Road had been treated to a tidal wave of goals, as Blackpool won that match 6-1.

Shrewsbury had thrown away a 3-0 half-time lead to draw 3-3 with their visitors, Doncaster Rovers, at the final whistle. That match even had a grandstand finish and a 94th minute equaliser for Doncaster. Salford City’s match at home to Barrow would also have been a better call as it ended 2-2 and each team scored in the final 10 minutes. Barrow thought they had won it in the 83rd minute only for Salford to equalise in the 89th minute to secure a point having lead 1-0 at half time.

Even heading across to Rochdale would have provided a better match than the one I suffered through. Rochdale went behind early before sparking a comeback with an equaliser in the 61st minute and sending their fans home ecstatic with a 94th minute winner. At least my journey home was only 2 hours on the train and 2 changes though. A couple down the row from me had travelled all the way from Chile for this one in support of Ben Brereton Diaz and I feel extremely sorry for them that they had such a wasted journey. I hope they find more interesting things to do with the rest of their holiday before heading back home.

For my part I’m back off to London this weekend in search of a decent football match, after suffering back to back dour spectacles in recent weeks. Hopefully Brentford can continue their recent excellent form as I return to see how Christian Eriksen fares against his old team, Tottenham Hotspur, on St. George’s Day.