ROVERS: Pick the Flowers, Glenn!

MEMO to Glenn Hoddle . . . Tim Flowers is alive and well and back at the peak of the form which made him second only to David Seaman in the international rankings.

It was due in large measure to the quality of Flowers that Blackburn Rovers were able to prise another precious point from Roker Park on Saturday and extend their run to six games, more than nine hours, without conceding a goal.

While he has had to share the distinction for that with Shay Given - who kept at Derby - Flowers showed the Sunderland faithful just why the Irish youngster can't get first team football at Ewood with a couple of touches of the highest class.

And, ironically, it came at the ground where Given is a cult hero, thanks to his three-month loan spell which helped Sunderland to promotion last season.

"There's only one Shay Given" and "Sign him on" sang the Roker fans as Ewood's number two stayed warm on the touchline.

But Flowers, who ignored the ballyhoo to give the kind of composed and authoritative display we have come to expect from him, returned the compliment in the best possible way - by his efforts on the pitch.

Hopefully, the message will get through to Hoddle before he names his squad for the game against Italy next month.

Then he too, like everyone else who saw the keeper shine in a scrappy, frantic and forgettable encounter, can say it with Flowers too. Being left out of the England plans over the past months has seriously pained a dedicated professional who played down his own Roker role as just another day at the office.

But he admitted: "I was the only player at Euro 96 to be left out and it really does hurt me that I am not involved.

"It was an absolutely fantastic experience and at 29 I felt I had learned so much. You get used to being involved.

"But I can only try and play as well as I can, train hard and, hopefully, if my chance comes, I will show the manager what I can do."

Flowers knows and acknowledged that great goalkeeping comes about not through the spectacular, such as he showed to deny Sunderland's Richard Ord with a back-breaking leap, but through being steady and solid - in other words cutting out the errors.

He produced both on Saturday when Rovers needed all their recently-discovered stability in a defensive sense to avoid defeat in a game that wasn't for the purists.

Two teams who closed down space, tended to treat the ball like a hot potato and could have done with slowing down the play by about 50 mph, cancelled each other out for long periods.

But there was no doubt that if either side was going to win an untidy affair, then it was Sunderland. They were the ones who had the chances and Rovers' defenders had to battle as hard as they have done all season against a side whose directness caused problems.

Apart from the occasional cross into the penalty area and one first-half chance created almost out of nothing by Kevin Gallacher's skill on the ball from a superb pass by Chris Sutton, Rovers rarely threatened the Sunderland goal.

The home team, whose games have tended to be tight this season, continually tried to catch Rovers by knocking the ball behind the back four.

And Flowers has not often had as much kicking to do as he did in this game.

That was the steady part of his game.

So too was the astute positional sense which enabled him to save - quite comfortably for a keeper of his quality - first half shots from David Kelly, Martin Smith and John Mullin.

Sharper finishers might have done better, but not necessarily with Flowers in this mood.

In the second half of a game which brought some bewildering refereeing decisions, there were two moments when Rovers looked as though they might have come unstuck at the back. On both occasions, Flowers was the man mountain who stifled Sunderland's roars of triumph.

The first came on the hour mark when Mullin got in a header and was turning to celebrate a goal when the keeper came out on top.

His finest stop, however, came from the second on 73 minutes.

Ord seemed a certain scorer as he rose to head in a corner and the ball looked beyond Flowers, until he arched cat-like to claw it away.

That save broke Roker hearts and a defence in which Jeff Kenna had an excellent game regained their previous composure.

They were given a tough 90 minutes, no doubt about that, but the confidence that has seeped into the side in the past couple of months means they are equipped to handle such tests these days.

There was no shortage of hard work but, with Sunderland's notoriously tight defensive system denying Rovers time and space, their creative powers suffered, especially down the flanks.

Sutton also grafted non-stop in his solo role down the middle but, for once, it was a thankless task.

Nevertheless, the striker still contributed to the team cause, typified by the way he got in a last-minute tackle to stop another Sunderland build-up.

After some of the style of recent games, this was back to the tense and frantic battles of the relegation scene.

Earlier in the season, Rovers might not have survived it.

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