ROVERS did brilliantly to get to the Under-21s Premier League Cup final and hopefully one or two of the players from the team can now make the breakthrough.

The success the side has had in the cup should hopefully keep some members of the first team on their toes.

It is a young first-team squad and if you are a member of the under-21s, hoping to hit the dizzy heights and make the step up, you should be thinking, ‘I can play alongside them because they are only a couple of years older than me’.

At the end of the day it will come down to the player as an individual.

Do you want it enough? Do you want to push yourself that little bit more than you normally would?

And if you don’t, and you want to stroll through it, then you are destined to spend the rest of your days at the club in the reserves and then you’ll probably end up having an average career at best, lower down the leagues, or even disappear out of the game altogether.

I’ve seen loads of players in my day do just that.

But I’ve also seen players who did go that extra yard but still had to go elsewhere.

When that happened, as an older player, I spoke to the young lad involved and told him not to give up and that he could bounce back.

A great example of that was Brett Ormerod.

He was a young lad at Blackburn who scored goals for fun.

But he got released because he wasn’t quick and he wasn’t tall and strong.

He decided to take a step back and went into non-league with Accrington Stanley but he worked his way up, with Blackpool and Southampton, and he ended up having a great career and all because he got his head down and grafted.

He’s even still playing now at Padiham!

As a young player it really is up to you.

Here’s hoping that in the next few years some of those Blackburn players who reached the Under-21 final will be first-team stars.