A picture worth a thousand words

This morning I made a rather miraculous medical discovery which I am not proud of - it is possible to have a raging hangover having not had one single alcoholic beverage the night before.

Yes, the news we all dreaded and expected at some point is in... Blackburn Rovers are relegated.

Taking the season as a whole into context and also taking into account what has actually taken place on the pitch we're in 19th position for a reason. We are the second worst side in the Premier League and deserve to go down. We've been treated to the odd rousing performance (Man United away, Arsenal home, Swansea home, Wolves away) but they've been isolated and been drowned out in a sea of useless, one dimensional efforts that has coldly served up our just desserts.

And how fitting that our fate was sealed in the lashing rain and with a lasting image of the Blackburn Rovers club crest being battered by a torrential downpour. If Carlsberg did metaphors...

And yet within last night's infamous image is hidden another saying since we're trotting them all out this morning - a picture worth a thousand words. A famous club taken and raped, beaten to within an inch of it's life and drained of any good feeling that a loyal fan base seemed to have for it.

Last night just rubber stamped the heartbreak. I sat there after the match and I cried for half an hour, a broken man and an exhausted wreck after being put through an 18 month football hell. It hurts even more knowing I am far from the only one.

The owners are to blame, the complicit manager is to blame and certainly to an extent the former owners in the Walker Trust are to blame. Let's not go into mass detail as we all know the problems the club have, they been well documented here, there and everywhere and depression is only a few more proverbial right hooks away.

Yet even now in this dark hour and with all the ifs and buts taken out of the equation, the people responsible don't seem to want to take, you know, any RESPONSIBILITY for what they've done. I keep hearing words like "dignity" and "respect" aimed at Steve Kean but never once have I actually heard him stand up and hold himself accountable for the mess he's helped create.

Sure, he's only a part of the Jupiter sized problem at the club but to have someone sit there and billy bullshit you for 18 months I'd at least expect an apology or a remorseful look, but there's been nothing.

And the same goes for the owners, when Rovers were relegated in 1999 the image I had of that night was of the tears streaming down Jack Walker's face, last night our cowardly owners sat a fair few air miles away in a family apartment in India watching the game and hiding away from the people they've brutally let down having been given the ultimate trust.

They've savagely cut costs at the club, stripped the team of the players that gave it a soul and treated the fans like a naive bunch of seven year olds. Kean meanwhile has been in on all of this from the start - he created this managerial chance for himself long before his actual appointment with the help of Jerome Anderson, Venky's and a whole heap of greed.

I am still not sure any of them have grasped that football to a lot of people isn't just a past time or a hobby, it's a way of life. Blackburn Rovers IS a way of life to me as it is to many others I've had the privilege of sharing the last 20 years of my life with. It's not just a game to me and I really don't care how sad that sounds.

Now we're left feeling heartbroken and totally dejected but "better" still... we're portrayed as the villains of the whole dark play for daring to give two hoots and taking a stand.

The logic is so galling it's almost incomprehensible - we've been lied to by the people in charge, had something we love torn to shreds and put through the emotional mill one too many times and then been told we're "idiots" for expressing our disgust. If you walked a mile in our shoes you'd act no differently...

Yes, it's easy to make a judgement based on what Mark Lawrenson, Jim White and Steve Kean's favourite tabloid want to tell you but try digging a little deeper and you'll find the real, honest truth. We've been sold down the river and a lot of supporters of other clubs will find this out only when it's too late.

So the Championship it is. Will we be back? Yes, we can rise from the ashes. Whether it'll be in 1, 2, 15 or 50 years time no-one can be sure but we'll still be here. When I say we I mean the fans, the victims not the cause.

It'll take a while for the scars to heal but my message to Venky's and Kean is this - "You'll never break us, we're worth a thousand times what you are."

For now though, all I am left with after an excruciating season that has been harder to take than all the others I've been a Blackburn Rovers fan combined together is an image of a club badge being lashed with rain.

A picture worth a thousand words.