A fan's-eye view from Ewood Park, with Phil Lloyd

JUST as we'd all forgotten how good a Saturday night can be, just as we'd given up hope of seeing Blue and White strikers scoring goals again at Ewood, suddenly, simply, Sounesstically, it all clicked into place.

Saturday's salvo against Sheffield was how we'd dreamed it would be, though we hadn't dreamed we'd have to wait till nearly the season's end to witness it. No need to play opponents off the park, as long as you've got the players to create the chances and the players skilful and confident enough to put those chances away.

Class finishing, that's what was the difference. Premiership class finishing. Premiership class finishing that somehow got locked away in a dusty Ewood cupboard until Mr Souness found the key and unleashed it on a Sheffield defence that was probably expecting an afternoon stroll.

My dad missed the game and is now at serious risk of being kept away for the final three home fixtures. He tells the true tale of once seeing John Burridge, then the Blades' keeper, shaving in the gents' of a local hotel shortly before they were due to play at Ewood, during a similarly inauspicious season for goalscoring by Rovers.

They joked about the fact that, the way we were playing, Budgie could have probably hung a mirror from the crossbar and done the job during the game, without interruption! That afternoon, Rovers won 6-1 so history was repeating itself on Saturday. Egil Ostenstad summed up a Rovers side changed radically for the better. Here was a striker playing like a striker should, wanting the ball, closing down the opposition, dropping deep to thread through Damien Duff for the opener, and rounding it off by rounding Tracey then having the confidence to back himself to score past the covering defender. Great stuff!

Saturday could have been even more enjoyable, however. Someone once said you need special qualities to be a referee and how true that is. Mr Messias' performance so resembled the first syllable of his name that his special quality must be the arcane plotting of how to spoil an afternoon for 18,000 people. He must have been deriving some strange pleasure from playing a bumbling buffoon, but in the end, even he didn't matter.

When it's raining goals, you have to cut the carping and sing the praises of our strikers (goodness knows, we've waited long enough).

Fantastic finishing, lads! Hallelujah!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.