RONAN Keating wasn't lying when he said life is a rollercoaster!

Over the last 10 days or so, I think I've experienced just about every emotion you can in football.

First, there was the huge disappointment of our last minute defeat at Middlesbrough.

Then came the blow of not being named in the original England squad for the friendly with Portugal.

Twenty four hours later, however, I suddenly found out I was in when Kieron Dyer had to pull out through injury.

And the elation I felt when I heard the news from Tony Parkes was only surpassed by the feeling I had when I made my actual debut itself at Villa Park on Saturday.

I knew I was never going to start that game and the best I could realistically hope for was maybe 20 minutes at the end.

So when I actually got the entire second half to show what I could do I was absolutely over the moon.

The whole experience felt like a dream come true from start to finish and all of the lads went out of their way to make me feel at home from the moment I met up with the squad for the first time.

As for my performance, I thought when I was on the ball I did okay but what I quickly learnt is that in those games you don't get as much chance to get on the ball as you do in the Premier League.

Therefore, when you do get on it, you've got to make sure you keep it because you know full well that you won't get it back either as quickly or as easily as you do in the league.

Now I've just got to cross my fingers and I hope that I get the call-up for next month's qualifier in Slovakia.

I'm not looking too far in front.

I've had a taste of what it's all about now and no-one can take that away from me so I'll just keep trying my best for Blackburn and if I keep my form up then, hopefully, I'll be knocking on the door.

Sven said well done, as did Steve McClaren, afterwards and everyone seemed to be quite pleased with how I played.

But I'm a young lad and I've still got a heck of a long way to go before I can't start dreaming of a sideboard full of caps.

Last night's game brought me back down to earth with a bump. If you score twice at home then that should be enough to guarantee you three points.

I thought we defended quite poorly as a team and we've got to start improving quickly in that department if we want to make headway in the table.

The one plus point for me was the performance of David Thompson who has slotted in quickly since his move from Coventry City.

He did well on his debut at Middlesbrough and picked up from where he left off last night.

I firmly believe we've got the basis of a good team here but we've got to stop leaking soft goals.

At the end of the day, your home form is crucial and that's three games at Ewood now without a win.

The disappointing thing for me about last night was Chelsea looked there for the taking.

I kept thinking 'if we get one, then we'll get a few' but as soon as we score we then tend to leak a few at the other end which is something we need to address as a team.