Down by the Riverside with Phil Lloyd

LIKE the viewers of last week's 'Who wants to be a millionaire', we rolled along to Ewood knowing the outcome.

Little Gillingham wouldn't ask us any questions that could defeat Rovers' wealth of experience and know-how.

Another home victory, and on we'd go to more testing challenges in December.

Judith Keppel seemed to annoy people with her performance on Chris Tarrant's show, but not half as much as Rovers' performance annoyed their fans.

Ms Keppel kept her cool, knew when to call on the audience's help and when to phone her friend. She also used her experience to come up with the answers when a lesser person might have lost their composure. In my book, she deserved her rewards.

Let's compare that with what we unfortunately witnessed at Ewood.

Rovers believed all they had to do was turn up. They answered the easy questions during the first quarter, barely needing the multiple choice options to find their way through to the Gillingham goal. Then came the fancy stuff, the showboating, the clever flicks, the tendency to overdo it.

And all of a sudden came a question they couldn't answer.

Instead of asking the audience for help, or even phoning a friend, they went 50:50 on a simple long ball from the visitors and the unfortunate John Curtis was deaf to his keeper's advice.

Even then there was time for a lifeline. Graeme Souness had another 45 minutes to give his 'final answer'. But where was the cool, where was the composure?

Where were the players running at the massed Gills defence, as they had done successfully before the ad break? Where were the penetrating crosses to feed Marcus Bent's aerial strength? Where was any semblance of an intelligent answer?

The second half, against a Gillingham team that was weak in reality as well as on paper, was as dreadful as any Rovers performance I can recall.

Finding their first-half arrogance misplaced, Rovers had nothing to fall back on, not even a bit of native wit and cunning.

And David Dunn deserved his sending-off, just as surely as Gillingham's Shaw did.

We threw away not a million pounds, but three points that could be worth many millions come May.

I wonder how high the stakes will be when we visit Priestfield for our last game of the season?

I wonder if any of our tarnished stars will have learned by then that calmness, clear-headedness and effort are essential if they are to win the big prize?

Judith Keppel could teach them a thing or two. If only they would listen.