The night team-mates Graeme Le Saux and David Batty started fighting on the pitch in a freezing Moscow will always haunt Blackburn Rovers fans. Here, Le Saux - in his new autobiography Left Field - reveals the truth behind the clash ...

I HAD nothing but regret after that fight between me and David Batty.

There was no justification for my behaviour.

I apologised to David after the game in the dressing-room in front of our team-mates, then I sat with him in the airport lounge and we talked about it.

He was absolutely fine, absolutely calm. He told me not to worry.

I talked to my wife Mariana on the phone. I told her I felt like I wanted to die.

It was amazing how quickly it all began to unravel for us at Blackburn. Just a couple of months after the high of winning the league in 1995, it was as if the glue that had kept us together began to dissolve.

Ray Harford had replaced Kenny Dalglish as manager and there was an edge between the players. Groups started to form. Tim Sherwood, Batts, Chris Sutton and Mike Newell - the stronger characters - got away with things that would not have happened under Kenny, and started to break the unity of the team.

I could feel the atmosphere changing. It was breaking down and we began to turn on each other. Suddenly, we were desperately vulnerable.

We travelled to Moscow to play Spartak in our doomed Champions League campaign. It was against this back-drop that Batty and I fell out so spectacularly.

People had started looking after themselves rather than playing for the team and there were a couple of games where David and I had had a go at each other.

David was one of those players who would always come short to get the ball. Occasionally, I'd tell him he didn't need to come so close. But if I didn't pass to him and ended up losing the ball, he'd have a go at me.

Gradually, that started to worsen. Then, two weeks before the incident in Moscow, I nutmegged him in training and he got the hump. He came after me and I got prickly about that. There was a sharpness developing.

The next game, he said something to me about being selfish and I came in at half-time and had it out with him in front of everybody.

I told him to repeat what he had said and he backed off. I thought that was it.

I was frustrated at the way things were going and I knew he was, too, but I thought we had got rid of the problem.

It was a horrible atmosphere in Moscow. It was bitterly cold, the pitch was frozen and the dressing-rooms were miserable.

I felt weighed down by a general air of anxiety even before kick-off. They scored early and things felt fraught, as though they were unravelling. Everything was going from bad to worse.

It was still the first half when I set off after a loose ball. I was running up the touchline, the ball in front of me. I was going to intercept it. David was coming across the pitch to try to get there as well. We arrived at the same time and ran into each other.

I hit the deck and, as I got up, he came at me very aggressively. He was being threatening and screaming things. His face was contorted with anger, as if he was going to rip my head off.

Hitting him was more of a pre-emptive strike than anything. If I had not hit him, I felt he was going to hit me.

It is a myth that he was hurling a stream of homophobic abuse. It wasn't the words that got to me, but a combination of four or five things.

I was upset at what he said and that he was accusing me of being selfish again; I was upset that we were not doing well as a team and I reacted because of the way he behaved.

His words were irrelevant, really; it was just that he was right in my face and I felt I had to protect myself.

I swung at him, connected and knew immediately that I had broken my left hand. I am not a fighter. I hadn't closed my fist properly. Tim Sherwood ran over to intervene and I thought he was going to hit me, but he pulled us apart. He was embarrassed. So was I.

At half-time, Ray had a go at us. He said he was ashamed. David didn't say anything. He seemed OK.

We were just two men who were deeply p***ed off at what was going on at our football club and who felt powerless to stop the slide.

More than anything, that night is the one thing I wish I could erase from my career.