AS THE shockwaves of Alan Shearer's world-record £15million transfer to Newcastle still rumble across a stunned East Lancashire, it is no time for the understandably upset Rovers' fans to turn their disappointment into bitterness at either the player or the Ewood club.

For there is no doubt that, in his four years at Blackburn, Shearer gave his best for the club.

And there can be no doubt either that, though £15 million richer, Rovers feel poorer today, having done all they possibly could to keep their megastar player and, yet, failed.

It is, then, a departure which brings the need - an urgent one, perhaps - for looking ahead by the club and mending a gap which might, in the eyes of the forlorn fans, seem unfillable today.

Plainly, something big and dramatic has to be pulled off by the club now to meet the high expectations that the Shearer era and championship glory have brought to Ewood Park.

And as there is no doubt about owner Jack Walker's commitment to that goal - as Alan Shearer himself exclusively testified in these pages only last night - we look forward with eagerness to a big-bang start to the season ahead. But, in this interim, it is also right to look back and reflect on what joy Alan Shearer brought to thousands of football fans. That is something which cannot be measured in money but which, for all the astronomic heights to which the transfer market has now climbed, might make the player seem undervalued even at £15million.

For Shearer's record speaks for itself....the only player to score 100 goals in the Premiership; the first to net more than 30 goals in three successive seasons at the top; and just what might have been his tally in his amazing first year with Rovers when he had hit 22 goals in just 26 games before a Boxing Day injury brought him to a halt? But the figures don't tell all about the Shearer magic. Nothing can replace the privilege of seeing the individual skill and the power at work - qualities matched in equal measure by an unselfish sense of team spirit and, rare these days, level-headed modesty. Simply the best!

That is the stuff of memories that no amount of Newcastle's money can take away.

And surely, for many fans there will be much compensation in him departing for his Tyneside roots and not for rival bidders Manchester United after a summer of wild tabloid propaganda designed to lure him to Old Trafford.

And, as Alan himself explained today, if he was going to leave Rovers, then it would only be for his home-town club.

And, deep in their hearts, after four years of the magic, unforgettable Shearer era at Blackburn, the fans knew that it was a case of not if, but when, he would go.

So thanks for the memory, Al. Thanks, too, to the club for doing their utmost to keep that era going at Ewood. But, now, let's look ahead.

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