THE captain of Trelleborgs sat crestfallen, crying in the dressing room.

Little did Jonas Brorsson know that today, 20 years on, he would be taking part in a reunion celebrating the most famous result in the Swedish club’s history.

“It was the best game ever for Trelleborgs,” Brorsson reflects now, speaking over the phone from his homeland.

“I think in another 50 years they will still be saying that.”

Brorsson almost became the villain on the night of Tuesday, September 27, 1994.

With Trelleborgs leading 1-0 from a remarkable UEFA Cup first round first leg at Ewood Park, the second match stood at 1-1 when the right back was sent off for a second bookable offence.

Now against 10 men, Alan Shearer scored for Blackburn Rovers and Kenny Dalglish’s side looked set to progress on away goals.

“I didn’t have a lot of skill but I used to be good at kicking people,” Brorsson jokes now.

“I got a yellow card earlier when I reacted to Tim Sherwood. I shouldn’t have done that.

“Then in the second half I did this tackle that I had done so many times before.

“But this time as I tried to kick the ball, it was chipped over my leg.

“I got a red card.  I was crying in the dressing room because I thought I had cost my team £300,000.

“I didn’t know that Blackburn had already scored when I heard the screams with a few minutes to go. I ran out and saw it was 2-2.”

Joachim Karlsson had scored a late equaliser for Trelleborgs to put the side from the south of Sweden through 3-2 on aggregate.

“I took Joachim and his wife out for a meal a few weeks later and I paid the bill because I said I owed him one!” Brorsson says.

“He lives in the very north of Sweden now but he has come to stay with me this weekend.”

Many of that team will be reunited for the first time today, as the club officially celebrate that result against Rovers.

Dalglish’s men may have been playing their first European tie, but they had just finished second in the Premier League and would go on to be champions later that season.

Trelleborgs were playing only their second tie in European competition, after defeating Faroese side Gotu in the qualifying round.

They had reached the UEFA Cup by finishing fourth in the Swedish Allsvenskan, but they were part-time footballers.

Just playing Rovers had been a dream draw for them.

“People in Sweden have always been interested in English football, we got live game on television in the 70s even before people in England did,” Brorsson said.

“We knew the Blackburn players, Shearer, Sutton, Flowers, Le Saux, Hendry. We knew a lot of them.

“Before the first leg we played a cup game from a team in the Third Division and lost, then on the Saturday we lost 2-0 at home in the league, so we were in really bad shape. We were fighting relegation that season.

“We all had other jobs. I worked in a transport business then, although in the media they called me a lorry driver and my job wasn’t to drive.

“When we arrived in England on the Monday the people there were telling us about how much money Shearer was earning and that if we lost 5-0 it will be a good result for us.

“We went to the stadium and our coach had to calm us down. Just seeing the lights and the stadium, we were all so excited. We thought if we lost 2-0 that would be okay.”

When the match started though, it quickly became apparent that they had more of a chance than they expected.

Brorsson said: “After about 20 minutes of the game I turned to my friend Christian Karlsson and said, ‘Well they’re good but they’re not that good’.

“Shearer was quick but he wasn’t that quick. If you were organised you could stop them.

“They tried to scare us, they tried to elbow us but we just did the same back. I think they thought the game was going to be easy, but as the game went on they were thinking ‘Why haven’t we scored?’.”

As it turned out the only goal of the game came in the 71st minute from Fredrik Sandell.

The striker’s day job was to supply ink to newspapers, now he would be making the headlines himself.

He had won the 20 krona – about £1.70 in today’s exchange rates – offered by coach Tom Prahl at half time to anyone who could give him a goal.

Trelleborgs’ Polish international keeper Ryszard Jankowski was excellent that night, in front of 13,775 at Ewood.

“It was a sensation,” Brorsson says of that first-leg result.

A fortnight later, Rovers arrived at Trelleborgs’ packed-out Vangavallen home – with a capacity of just 7,000 – for the second leg.

Chris Sutton put them in front to level the tie on aggregate, before Joachim Karlsson struck the first of his brace that night.

His dramatic second goal wrote his name into Trelleborgs history.

The Swedes would go out to Lazio in the second round, drawing 0-0 at home before Alen Boksic’s 90th-minute goal in Rome brought an end to their brave run.

Brorsson, by 1994 a veteran, retired happy a couple of years after the Rovers game.

He made 372 appearances for the club.

A few years later he had a chance meeting with one of the Rovers team he had faced.

“Six or seven years later I was at La Manga and I saw Colin Hendry, who was at Coventry at the time I think,” Brorsson remembers.

“I couldn’t resist so I went up to him, said hello and explained that I had been the Trelleborgs captain.

“He said that was the worst experience he had ever had, losing that tie! But he was very polite.”

Brorsson would spend several years as Trelleborgs’ general manager, although the club have gone into decline since his departure.

They now play in Division One South, the third tier of Swedish football.

“When I left I said it’s not going to last, we’re going to get relegated one day,” said Brorsson, who now works for DHL.

“Unfortunately the club went down two divisions in two years (in 2011 and 2012). It was a shame.”