HOMEGROWN players who have spent the majority of their careers at their club are a dying breed now.

So it’s a great shame to see David Dunn leaving Blackburn Rovers and you can only hope one day he will be back coaching at the club or in another role.

It doesn’t seem long ago that he was making his full Blackburn debut alongside me against Liverpool at Anfield.

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I always remember Dunny being a really talented kid and we were lucky at the time because he was one of many.

There was Damien Duff, Damien Johnson and Martin Taylor and you couldn’t say one particularly stood out.

But obviously Dunny has been the one to go on and make the most impact at this club.

He was unfortunate that soon after breaking into the first team we were relegated from the Premier League.

But what dropping down into the division now known as the Championship did was allow him to make his mark at that level.

The big question back then was could he make the step up to the higher stage?

He certainly did that and I’m sure he will get the reception he deserves in the final game of the season on Saturday.

If we needed another match to sum our season up then it came last weekend in the 2-2 draw at Huddersfield.

While we were not playing well, we found ourselves 2-0 up and you would have hoped that would have been enough for us to win the game.

But as soon as they got that goal before half-time that horrible feeling in your gut returned and you just knew they would get back into it.

They pressurised us, we didn’t look lively, and they eventually got the equaliser they deserved.

Our problem is we have a tendency to try and sit back and hold a lead.

We have proved when we go out to attack a team we can batter them.

But, unfortunately, too often this season we have tried to sit back and counter attack.

Some of the games it has worked and some of the games it hasn’t.

When it hasn’t, it has backfired on us and cost us precious points, so much so that we’ll finish with less than we achieved last season, which is not good.

We have drawn far too many games and Saturday was just another example.

There have been times when we could have brought David Dunn on as he is still capable of dictating things from the centre of the park.

That has not always been possible because of injury and from next season it will not be possible at all.