FORGOTTEN man Maceo Rigters insists he won’t chuck in the towel on his Blackburn Rovers career after being told to stay at Ewood Park until the rest of the season.

The Dutch striker – who has failed to score in two and half years of English football – had packed his bags ready to make a deadline-day loan switch to Kilmarnock.

But Rovers manager Sam Allardyce vetoed his move to the Scottish Premier Division club after missing out on a deal to sign Aruna Dindane and seeing his striking options depleted with the sale of Benni McCarthy to West Ham.

Rigters remains well down the striking pecking order at Rovers, behind the likes of Nikola Kalinic, Jason Roberts, Franco Di Santo, and has gone almost two years without a single Premier League appearance.

However, he did return from the football wilderness last month when featuring for 20 minutes in Blackburn’s FA Cup third round defeat at Aston Villa.

And with Allardyce halting his loan move north of the border, Rigters hopes he will be handed a fresh chance to prove his goalscoring credentials and show why Rovers took him to East Lancashire after winning the golden boot for Holland in the 2007 European Under-21 Football Championships.

“This is a great opportunity for me. I proved at the Under-21 Championships that I can score goals and play well, now I need to prove that to the Blackburn fans,” said Rigters.

“I have never really had a run of games since I came to England - now this is my chance.

"I have one year remaining on my deal at the end of the season so now I need to play well and look to extend my contract here.”

He added: “Blackburn and Kilmarnock had agreed a deal and I spoke to their manager Jimmy Calderwood.

“I was excited about scoring goals in the SPL, I had packed my things and I was ready to drive to Scotland when I received a call that I needed to wait.

“It was frustrating, I was ready to go but I was told that Sam Allardyce did not want me to go unless he brought in another experienced striker.

“Just after five o'clock the club told me that I could not go, I was devastated.

"But I now look at the positives. Sam Allardyce didn’t want me to go and now it is up to me to break into the first team and show what I can do.”