[themaclad]

Blackburn Rovers 1 Dack Preston North End 4 Woodburn, Evans 2 Whiteman

Blackburn Rovers line-up: Kaminski; Carter, Hyam, Wharton; Brittain (Mola, 8), Morton, Travis, Hedges; Dack, Szmodics (Dolan, 58); Brereton Diaz (Gallagher, 58). Subs not used: Pears, Ayala, Hirst, Buckley.

PNE line-up: Woodman; Storey, Lindsay, Cunningham; Potts, Whiteman, Ledson, Fernandez (Slater, 90+1); Johnson (Mawene, 90+3), Woodburn (O'Neill, 90+3); Evans (Cross-Adair, 88). Subs not used: Cornell, Bauer, Diaby, Slater.

Attendance: 17,690 (4,270 PNE fans)

Referee: Mr J Smith.

Going back 30 plus years lived in a place called Clayton Green, it was split fairly evenly between good and evil, when Uncle Jack came along with his unliited funds and they ended up in the top division, some of our fans suddenly defected to the dark side and became glory hunters, still annoys me to this day, that is the reason todays 4-1 mauling at the ground of empty seats will linger long in the memory.
Not the easiest f journeys especially skating on the ice on my drive.
Long time since I've drive in snow but managed to arrive in one piece, car neatly abandoned in Darwen.
When I saw the team almost instantly turned round to go home, Browne, McCann, Brady and Riis missing left us down to bare bones with several youngsters on the bench, but what transpired was truly remarkable.

Te tone was set when Ledson crunched a home player with a tackle to say it was robust is an understatement, after that they didn't want to know, we dominated from then on in, rarely troubled by the home side in the first period, son ahead Evans who had a stormer found Woodburn in acres of space in te gaping hole at the centre of Rovers defenced advanced on goal and curled it passed the keeper.



We could have had more there was a spell of a couple of minutes were they couldnot get out of their own penalty area, shots rained in , clearances of the line ball just wouldn't go in, they had occasional forays into our half but never really troubled Woodman.
Doubled our lead very early in the second half, nearly scoreed when DJ closed down the keeper just could not get his shot in, from the goal kick zero idea what they were doing, playing out from the back they ballsed it up DJ to Ched and it's two.
They all played well today although Alvaro's defending does leave room for improvement as a home player skipped past him, ball into box and Dack reduced the arrears.
But not for long, Cunningham's magnificent cross found the head of Ched 1-3, two minutes later a sweeping move Johnson dummied the ball in the box, Whiteman blasted home and that was that, the snow started to settle but the points were heading home to Deepdale
As for he home side all you can say is they were truly abysmal, long may it last
And the fat Chilean got substituted



Blackburn head coach Jon Dahl Tomasson:

"When we played the ball, we didn't play quick enough. Didn't have enough players who were prepared to make runs forward.

"We played too many balls backwards instead of playing the ball forward. We lost more or less every duel.

"We're very disappointed, of course, which we should be after the performance. We were second best with everything.

"You always need to stay together after a performance like that, but every situation that happened today was just not good enough. The intensity we played the ball with, backwards, sidewards, was too slow."

Preston boss Ryan Lowe:

"The game plan worked to a tee, stuff we've been working on. I thought in possession and out of possession we were fantastic.

"I must say credit to the group because when you get a hit in terms of injury and the group sees players going down, it can harm you.

"The togetherness I've seen in the past four weeks, I said to our lads, whoever plays, it isn't about 11, 12, 13 players, it's the squad.

"When the squad needs to be utilised like it has been today and opportunities come along, you've got to take them."