A fan's-eye view from Ewood Park, with Phil Lloyd

DO YOU think the Scots celebrate April Fool's Day a week later than the rest of us?

Before the Wolves game, fans and players are told it is a 'must win' game, if our faint play-off hopes are to be kept alive.

One defeat later and we're told we can still make it! Come off it, Graeme, you'll be telling us next that the word 'gullible' doesn't appear in any dictionary and that we should check if we doubt it.

We can now add Wolves to QPR, Crewe and the mighty Swindon -- inferior outfits that have walked away from their encounters with Rovers rubbing their eyes in disbelief at a four-point haul.

Forget the League positions, the home team on Saturday were so inept, so ragged, for 45 minutes that it was the Rovers fans left blinking in the April sunlight trying to work out how their team had gone in one down to such shambling opposition. In the end it was worth the trip to Molineux if only to see another Damien Duff gem and to put a final nail in the coffin of at least one Rovers player whose Ewood career must shortly, mercifully end. Watching for once with the eye of a tabloid journalist rather than a committed fan, I noted that the manager acknowledged Ashley Ward's substitution with barely a glance in his direction.

Previous incumbents of the Ewood hot seat appear to have had difficulty with Ward in distinguishing between effort and ability, but there isn't a fan I know who wouldn't now put Brian Kidd's most foolish signing out to permanent pasture.

Ward has long been an embarrassment in a blue and white shirt, and the fact that Ostenstad was substituted even earlier than Ward, and thanked even less by Souness, should be a final warning to the Norwegian, too.

Peacock and Grayson are two others who have been present only fitfully in the new era, yet the manager says he does not envisage a major clear-out this summer. I suppose it depends what you define as 'major'.

I hear that Swindon's matchday programme on the real April 1st had a certain Rivaldo among the home team player profiles, with shirt sponsorship by a mysterious Mr A Fool! I'm glad they can laugh at their predicament.

The faces of the visiting fans leaving the Black Country last Saturday told a rather grimmer story. Let's start our rebuilding now -- get the bulldozers in and get our dozing bulls out!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.