Frederick William Hargreaves was born on 16th August 1858 in Blackburn and he became the first on 15th March 1880. The most recent one was on 1st June 2008, a player by the name of Stephen Warnock.

That’s right, England internationals capped whilst playing for Blackburn Rovers. Some pub quiz fodder for you all to start!

When I started supporting Rovers, Keith Newton was in the England squad and would travel to Mexico for the 1970 World Cup, but he would soon leave Ewood for Everton and it would be 23 years before Alan Shearer added to the tally.

As we are 16 years on from Warnock’s appearance, is there perhaps a youngster in the academy or a toddler somewhere in East Lancashire kicking their first football who might blossom into the next one?

INTERVIEW: LEWIS TRAVIS OPENS UP ON JDT RELATIONSHIP AND JANUARY EXIT

These days, an international break involving England holds little direct interest for Rovers fans, especially as we can’t even take any vicarious pleasure from the presence of Adam Wharton, who has found himself dropped back to the Under-21s in favour of Angel Gomes.

The England women’s team have been a rich source of former Rovers players, of course, with Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway & Ella Toone all having Rovers on their CVs, but they too had to leave to earn full caps.

The strongest Rovers-England connection currently is the interim head coach, Lee Carsley who ‘graced’, if that’s the right word – it almost certainly isn’t – the Rovers midfield, for a little under two years at the turn of the millennium.

From all the players in that squad inherited by Graeme Souness from Brian Kidd, Carsley would not have been near the top of my list of potential England managers - or head coaches. (Garry Flitcroft or Chris Sutton if pressed by the way...shows what I know).

The ‘excitement’ of the international break can now be consigned to the mental recycling bin...what? There’s another one in a month? Crikey...

The season had barely broken sweat from the starting pistol before the hiatus, but the return of club football will be welcomed with open arms and Rovers will have the opportunity to cement their solid start to this campaign on Saturday against Bristol City.

The Burnley performance highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of this squad quite beautifully. A wonder goal from Weimann, a splendid debut from Beck and a solid second-half display with ten men in which Rovers amazingly managed to carve out the better chances were all very encouraging.

Balanced against that was the jittery start, defensively, against intense early Burnley pressure and the soft sending off of Gueye which shows he needs time to acclimatise to the idiosyncrasies of the English game. If ever there was an example of a red card for naivety...

The hope is that the break has given John Eustace valuable time to work with the squad and to instil more of his footballing philosophy. My observation so far is that his approach hasn’t consigned JDT ball to the dustbin entirely, we still pass the ball out from the back and take years off my life expectancy; but there can be no doubt that his style has made the team more resilient, except for that one game last season where we were completely taken apart of course.

The opponent? Bristol City naturally. They say that lightning doesn’t strike twice and all that, let’s hope that’s what we all still believe come Saturday teatime.

On a lighter note to finish, users of the social media abomination “X” formerly known as Twitter, may well have seen a post this week from the master of all he surveys on that domain, Elon Musk.

Elon Musk via X.Elon Musk via X. (Image: X)

For a moment, the wording made me think he’d just bought Chelsea, but upon reflection, perhaps Rovers need to mobilise and tap into this extra-terrestrial potential marketplace to get ahead of the herd?

Would work permits be a problem though?