THIS year marks two significant anniversaries in the history of Blackburn Rovers.

The most recent, the 1994-95 Premiership title triumph, is the more well-documented and heralded.

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But rewind another 20 years and the 1974-75 Third Division victory, certainly at the time, was no less cherished.

It marked Rovers’ first piece of major silverware since the great Bob Crompton led the club to the Division Two championship in 1939.

And it was the brainchild of manager Gordon Lee.

His predecessor in the Ewood Park hotseat, Ken Furphy, had done much to lift the gloom around the club.

But it was Lee, in what would be his first and only full season in charge of Rovers, who guided the club back into the second tier of English football after four years away.

In a summer of massive change, out went the likes of John O’Mara, Bren Arentoft, Kit Napier and David Bradford to the surprise of supporters, and in came Ken Beamish, Graham Oates, Pat Hilton and Graham Hawkins.

Hawkins met up with Lee and some of his former team-mates at last Thursday’s Celebration of Champions event organised by the Blackburn Rovers Former Players Association to honour the ’75 and ’95 title-winning teams.

And the centre-back, who went on to make 121 appearances for Rovers after making the move from Preston North End, admits it brought the memories flooding back.

“Gordon was a great influence,” said Hawkins, who was named in the 1974-75 PFA Third Division Team of the Year alongside goalkeeper Roger Jones and full-back Andy Burgin.

“I’d been brought up at Wolverhampton Wanderers and I was a defender who went to head it, stopped people from scoring, and kicked the ball up the other end of the field.

“So I had the shock of my life when I had my first training session at Altham and Gordon set it up, with Roger in goal and the back four, and he said, ‘right, this is how we’re going to play’.

“He turned round to myself and said, ‘you’re going to get the ball off Roger’, and I went blank. Nobody had asked me to do that before.

“But that was how we played, that was Gordon and nobody else.

“It took time but he was very patient and as long as everybody did their very best, he’d take the mistakes, but if anybody ducked and dived, they’d get a bit of a hammering.

“I remember when we were coming toward the end of the season, I thought ‘we’ve got one hell of a chance’.

“And of course the famous game was when we won 2-0 at home to Chesterfield to seal promotion.

“We then drew 0-0 with Wrexham, but as it ended up, it was enough for us to win the championship and the rest is history.

“When you win the title and win promotion, after all the trials and tribulations that have gone before it, and the fans join in and come on the pitch, that’s what it’s all about.”

Hawkins’ centre-back partner for the second half of the season was the club’s record appearance holder, Derek Fazackerley.

Rovers legend Fazackerley, who lost his place at the start of the campaign to John Waddington, said: “It’s incredible – 40 years seems like yesterday.

“What we achieved was trumped 20 years later by the Premier League team but at that particular time it was a big achievement for Blackburn as we had slipped into the old Third Division.

“And particularly for players like myself, because I’d been involved in the club being relegated three seasons before.

“We started off the season with the intention of doing well. Gordon had come in three or four months toward the end of the previous season and then really set his marker down in the summer by bringing in three or four players like Graham Hawkins, Ken Beamish and Graham Oates.

“We hit the ground running and carried that on. It was a fantastic season.”