Division Blue

MORE EXCITING NEWS ⚽️

🚌⚽ FOX & HOUNDS EWOOD AWAY DAYS ARE BACK! ⚽🚌

A few of you may remember that a couple of years ago we talked about running away coaches from the Fox & Hounds. Unfortunately, it never quite got off the ground…

Well, this season that changes!

🔵⚪ THE FOX & HOUNDS EWOOD WILL BE RUNNING AWAY COACHES TO EVERY BLACKBURN ROVERS AWAY MATCH! ⚪🔵

That’s right – every away game, we’ll be travelling together as one big Rovers family.

🚍 Travel with fellow Rovers supporters
🚍 Depart directly from the Fox & Hounds Ewood
🚍 No train delays
🚍 No parking headaches
🚍 No splitting up the group
🚍 Proper away days with proper Rovers fans

🍳🥪 AND THERE’S MORE…

For every away match, supporters will meet at the Fox before departure, where FREE breakfast cobs, sandwiches or breakfast items will be provided depending on departure time.

Early kick-off? We’ll sort breakfast.

Later departure? We’ll sort sandwiches.

All included before we hit the road and follow the Blues!

🏆 INTRODUCING THE FOX & HOUNDS MEMBERSHIP CLUB 🏆

To reserve seats on away coaches, supporters will need to join our brand-new membership scheme.

Membership benefits will include:

✅ Priority access to away coach bookings
✅ Reserved/permanent coach seating where possible
✅ First refusal on high-demand fixtures
✅ Exclusive member-only drink offers
✅ Discounts on selected pints and drinks
✅ Early access to events, artists and live entertainment
✅ Priority booking for special pub events
✅ Exclusive raffles, offers and promotions
✅ Future membership rewards and perks

This is being built for the regulars, the away-day faithful and everyone who wants to be part of something special at the Fox.

⚽ Whether it’s Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Norwich or anywhere else the Rovers take us… we’ll be going together.

📋 Full membership details, coach prices and booking information will be announced soon.

For now, if you’re interested in joining the Fox & Hounds Away Day Club, comment below, send us a message or put your name down at the bar.

🔵⚪ ONE CLUB. ONE COACH. ONE FOX. ⚪🔵

🏠 Fox & Hounds Ewood
🏆 Blackburn Rovers’ Number One Home Fans Only Pub

🚌🍳⚽🍻

Rovers’ marketing dept highlighting the cost of chips crisis at Ewood. Only 22p per pomme frite. Bargain. 🤔

THE ROSE & LIONS / Ref: 048

Stephen Warnock; Caps: 2 (1 for Rovers); Goals: 0

Concluding the series is the last Rovers player to earn an England cap whilst representing the club, the 48th Blackburn Rover to do so.

It’s been eighteen years, which isn’t so surprising when you consider that we haven’t been in the top-flight since 2012.

Stephen Warnock was the player blessed with a six-minute run out in the Port of Spain, Trinidad. Curiously, he was the seventh substitute in a friendly fixture that only permitted six and the match was almost null and void and his cap with it.

England claimed that FIFA’s local bagman Jack Warner had agreed to the amendment, even though Trinidad & Tobago only named six substitutes themselves.

Warner later denied agreeing to any such thing, presumably because he didn’t find an envelope stuffed full of cash under his pillow later that night, or that he was hoping for a reversal of the 0-3 result on the 100-year anniversary of his country’s FA.

The outcome was eventually approved by FIFA and Warnock’s cap counted. Warner’s word was rarely his bond.

There have been many Rovers players since 2008 to have repped England in the past or future of course, or play for the junior sides, but Warnock remains the last player to be honoured with a cap for the three lions whilst simultaneously being part of the Rovers squad.

Will we ever see another one again? Will we ever return to the top-tier? Will football ever actually come home? Ronnie Clayton, Bryan Douglas and Alan Shearer have undoubtedly been the cream of the post-war crop. True legends in blue and white, Arte et Labore with roses and lions on their shirts.

It’s a bit of Div Blu is that…

Don’t think we didn’t notice Mogga’s exquisite seasonal tailoring by the way. Fit for the unveiling of any King, and looking like a total boss man. Dr. René Belloq (from Raiders of the Lost Ark) eat your heart out…

If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it’s that a steady and consistent companion, through thick and thin, is always better (if not as exciting) than a saucy fling with a stranger. Welcome home gaffer. We are the Rovers. 🤍💙🌹

THE ROSE & LIONS / Ref: 047

David Bentley; Caps: 7 (6 for Rovers); Goals: 0

There was a viral trend last year where the Barclaysmen were widely celebrated on social media. Cult figures from the early naughties heyday of Premier League football. Rovers featured heavily: Pedersen, Tugay, Samba, Nelsen, Roque and the exquisite right peg of David Bentley.

The £1.5m signing of the Arsenal starlet was yet another cut-price coup from the bargain-hunting era of Mark Hughes. When he departed 2.5 years later, as a full England international, his fee to Spurs was £17m.

Gifted with a wand of a right-boot, Bentley could pick out the Rovers’ attack with exquisite precision from out-wide. He didn’t even have to beat his man, and if the cross wasn’t on, he’d simply cut inside and arrow one into the top corner instead.

He’d already represented his country at U16, U18, U19, U20, U21 and B level, and was almost 23 when Stuart Pearce called him up for the U21 European Championship in the summer of 2007. He’d played 51 games at club level that year, domestically and in Europe. Bentley was burned out and withdrew from the squad.

Psycho Pearce wasn’t happy and rallied the predictably pi**ed off posse of purple-faced Hackney cab drivers to swell the lines of TalkSport.

The radio waves pulsed with anti-patriotic protest, as if the U21 Euros was an actual war. For King and country. Over land and sea. Complete and utter bo****ks.

Bentley, they demanded, should face the firing squad for sullying the proud names of all those poor souls on war memorials that the Empire’s war machine had willingly sent to their untimely and needless deaths.

Cream-crackered, too old and too good weren’t valid excuses to dodge the draft. He may as well have taken a s**t on the steps of the Cenotaph and wiped his arse with a Beefeater’s hat.

When he finally made his senior debut against Israel, for a desperate Steve McClaren, Bentley was roundly booed by the increasingly moronic factions of England’s fanbase.

It should have been the proudest moment of his life and career and there’s little wonder he fell out-of-love with the game entirely, packing it all in by the age of 29.

If B*rnl*y ceased to exist tomorrow, who would you class as our most-heated local rivals? K**b End or Horwich Wanderers?