RAY Harford and the Blackburn Rovers squad will welcome the chance to put the Alan Shearer saga well behind them at Layer Road tomorrow when they make their first appearance in public against Colchester United.

A week of sensational action and reaction off the field can't have done much good for the club's pre-season build-up.

But Rovers boss Harford believes it can finally be put aside as the action starts again and they get back to basics.

"The players will be happy to be involved in matches again. There's nothing better for them than when they have an end product after all the running," he said.

"They enjoyed the private practice match we had against Manchester City on Wednesday.

"It's always a slog during the first two or three weeks of pre-season training but now they can test themselves in a match situation.

"There's nothing like playing games."

Rovers will be expected to win tomorrow against a Colchester side who made the Third Division promotion play-offs at the end of last season.

Their hosts have already had two games, against non-League opposition and an Arsenal reserve side, winning the first and drawing the second.

But Harford, who is taking his full senior squad to the South East for tomorrow's game and a follow-up match against Cambridge on Monday night, won't be too concerned about results.

He said: "Pre-season games can sometimes give you a false impression, because it's not a real situation. There's no real pressure.

"I will be changing things around quite a bit during the matches, because everything has to be geared to the first League fixture."

Henning Berg, who returned to training this week, is unlikely to feature just yet.

But Harford hopes that Chris Sutton, Tim Flowers and Garry Flitcroft, who have all had slight injuries, will have recovered.

It will be interesting to see which partnerships he uses in attack now that Shearer is no longer there.

The game was arranged some time ago, following a helping hand with training facilities from Colchester when Rovers were playing a cup tie at Ipswich.

Harford was at Layer Road at the same time as ex-Rovers boss Jim Smith in the 1970s and also knows the present Colchester manager Steve Wignall well.

The club didn't want to do too much pre-season travelling because a number of Ewood internationals have had a busy summer.

So this two-match mini-trip and next week's short stay in Holland should be ideal preparation.

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