Matt Kilgallon was one of the more experienced members of a youthful Rovers squad – but he always knew that some of his team-mates would reach the top.
Kilgallon played alongside the likes of Tom Cairney, Josh King and Michael Keane early into their respective careers before they became established Premier League names.
The likes of Scott Dann, Grant Hanley and Jordan Rhodes would also go on to play top flight football after leaving Ewood Park.
Cairney’s quality, in particular, stood out in training and it was a struggle to get the ball off the talented midfielder.
“I think we had a squad there - Tom Cairney, Josh King, Rudy Gestede, Ben Marshall - if they were probably another two years older, we'd have won that league. That's how good our squad was,” said Kilgallon, speaking with Lancashire Telegraph via free spins from NetBet.
“We just got them a little bit too early, we were just a little bit young. If it was two years on, we'd have won that league.
“Even then, I think we should have probably got play-offs with some of the players we had there.”
He continued: “Tom Cairney must have been in his early twenties when he came. He was a good looking lad, looked like a boy band, but you couldn’t get the ball off him! He knew how to protect it, he was made out of concrete, strong. You could tell he was top.
“Josh King was just so fast. You'd never seen anything like it, absolutely rapid. You could tell (they would play in the Premier League).
“Like I say, another two years and we'd have done something really special there. I was getting older but I’d seen young lads where you go, ‘These will crack on again and play in the Premier League, no doubt’.”
The defender headed to Lancashire in 2013 following a spell at Sunderland. He had previously worked with Craig Short - who was part of Gary Bowyer’s backroom staff at Ewood Park - during his Sheffield United days.
The move instantly appealed to Kilgallon and even the dreaded traffic crossing the Pennines wasn’t enough to put him off.
“My time at Sunderland was up, they didn't offer me a new contract. It was Craig Short, who I knew well from where I lived, and I'd worked with him at Sheff United,” he recalled.
“He got in touch with me and said, ‘We're keen on you, me and Gary, we've watched clips of you recently and we’d love you here’.
“I just thought, ‘Amazing, another big club, good following’. I said, ‘All day long mate, what's the script, what do I need to do?’
“He said, ‘This is what we can give you, but what I want you to do is come to see the training ground because I want you to drive the A59 from Harrogate and see if you could do that every day. If not, you might have to get a flat round here or something’.
“I did that on the day and said that's no problem, I can do that daily. That's how it came about.
“And obviously I looked at the squad as well. There was a good squad there and some good players. I couldn't wait to get going.”
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Kilgallon enjoyed his time working under Bowyer and relished the responsibility that the manager handed to the more experienced members of the squad.
“He is a really good guy. I was 30-odd at Blackburn Rovers and he had a good way of looking after the older lads,” he insisted.
“He gave you a little bit of freedom, let you manage the younger lads as well and gave you a bit of a leash to go, ‘You can sort that out, I trust you to do that’.
“That’s always nice to have, it just gives you a bit more responsibility. He made me captain for a bit as well. He had some good ideas and good people around him, I really did enjoy my time there.”
Part of that responsibility included taking on the armband after previous skipper Hanley had been sidelined by injury, and it was a special moment for Kilgallon.
“It was class,” he smiled. “We had just trained and I was coming off the pitch and he said, ‘I've wanted to do this for a while’.
“I was in the team, I was playing well and he just said, ‘I want you to be captain now’. I think Grant Hanley was the captain, he was going to be out for the season.
“He said, ‘I want to give it to you now and take us home’. We were having a good FA Cup run as well at the time.
“I snapped his hand off for it. I enjoyed captaining the club, it was a good feeling leading them out at Ewood Park.”
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