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

I HAVE a dream. An appropriate sentiment for the new Millennium perhaps, whether you relate it to Martin Luther King or, more prosaically, to Westlife.

Actually, I have a nightmare. Maybe this betrays my fragile state of mind, caused more by the roller-coaster experience of the last decade as a Rovers supporter than by any excessive celebration of Y2K.

My nightmare is a foreboding of late May. In the gospel according to Tony, Rovers rescue their season from a spiralling decline and burst triumphantly through the swing doors of the Last Chance Saloon, otherwise known as the play-offs.

To some, after our trials and tribulations, this may seem like Nirvana. To me, bedevilled by the pessimism that wracks the majority of Rovers supporters, this is where the nightmare begins.

The horror in my dream is not simply missing promotion. After all, there are some who believe we've drifted so far from our glorious recent past that even an immediate return would see us cast among the flotsam and jetsam, perennial Premiership strugglers.

It's worse than that. The Division One play-off final takes place on Monday 29 May. Another do-or-die, all-or-nothing occasion, just like the Leicester game eight years ago.

Now let's suppose that a certain other Lancashire club makes the Division Two play-off final - and looking at the 'competition' in that League, I reckon they'd have to play pretty badly to avoid reaching the play-offs.

Let's now assume, by some mischance, the Team that Stan Built actually wins and the evening of Sunday 28 May sees the streets of Wembley painted claret and blue. The nightmare is this: Burnley have already won promotion and Rovers still have it to do.

Would the Burnley fans waste an entire Bank Holiday Monday hanging around the Wembley just in case they got the chance to 'commiserate' with supporters of the old enemy? You can bet your next beauty sleep on it!

In a previous Millennium, we could have relied on Rovers to clinch the desired result but ... after all we've been through?

This spectre looms increasingly large as Rovers slowly (too slowly in failing to put Wolves to the sword on Monday) recover ground lost under Kidd.

Reaching the play-offs could mean we run the risk of such a capital embarrassment, a risk that makes the goal of a top two place even more attractive, doesn't it?

As Nick Ross would say, 'Don't have nightmares!'

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