IT'S one o'clock on a Thursday afternoon and Blackburn Rovers' Brockhall training ground is abuzz with talk of the previous night's victory over Manchester United in the Premiership.

On the car park outside, David Bentley, Rovers' hat-trick hero against United, is being interviewed by a Sky TV crew.

Inside, the telephone in reception is red hot with scores of requests from other journalists eager to catch a word with the man of the moment.

But I'm not here to speak to Bentley. My appointment is with Craig Bellamy, Mark Hughes' £4 million summer signing, who has agreed to do a rare interview as he nears full fitness again following a three-week lay-off with a hamstring injury.

Surprisingly for a man who is never short of something to say on the pitch, Bellamy rarely does interviews these days, mainly because he has lost count of the number of times he has seen his words 'manipulated' by journalists in the past.

On this occasion, though, it was he who made the first move and initiated this meeting by inviting me for a one-to-one chat and for the next three quarters of an hour, we sit and talk candidly in an upstairs room at the senior training centre about his first six months at Blackburn.

He talks honestly - and openly - about why he chose Rovers, his great respect for Mark Hughes, his ambition to play in Europe again, and the difficulties he first experienced settling in after leaving Newcastle.

Unlike the way he is often portrayed in the national media, Bellamy is an engaging character and what immediately strikes you is his intense passion for the game. He lives and breathes it.

When football dominates the topic of conversation, you get the sense Bellamy would happily hold court all day.

What he doesn't like talking about is his private life and that's where his distrust of the media ultimately has its roots.

Bellamy is the first to admit he's had something of a chequered career and it seemed at one point, he was making more headlines on the news pages than he was on those for sport.

In fact, only last week, several days after this interview was conducted, the News of the World ran a story claiming Bellamy was wanted by police for questioning in connection with an alleged attack on a teenage girl in a Cardiff nightclub.

Such revelations are not new to the striker, but when you've had as much negative publicity as he has over the years, it's easy to understand why he is so reluctant to put himself under more scrutiny by the media than is necessary.

"I think some of it (the bad publicity) was maybe justified to a degree in the past," said Bellamy frankly.

"But there's a lot of people who don't understand me and, to be honest, I'm not here to sit everyone down and say Look, I'm a nice guy really' because that doesn't bother me.

"I've learnt more by trying to keep things private. This is the first real interview I've done since I've been here because I don't want to be in the papers all the time.

"I'm only doing this because it's for the Blackburn paper and I promised myself I would do one - and this will probably be the last I do.

"To be honest, I just want to concentrate on football. That's the most important thing for me.

"I don't need to read comments from myself and there's a lot of bad journalists out there.

"Even from speaking to you now, there will be journalists somewhere taking little bits from this interview and turning it into whatever they want.

"You can't control that, and I don't need to read about it, so that's why I don't really speak to anyone because I just want to concentrate on my football."

Bellamy found that media intrusion to be unrelenting during his time at Newcastle, where he felt as if he was living his life in a goldfish bowl.

Because the passion for football is so fervent in the north east, Bellamy felt the players were viewed as public property so everything they said and did was scrutinised to the nth' degree and plastered all over the papers.

At Blackburn, it's different. The media interest in the club is not as intense at national level, which leaves the players free to focus more on football matters.

Aside from that, Bellamy is also working for a manager in Mark Hughes who understands exactly what makes him tick.

For those reasons, Blackburn feels like a sanctuary compared to his turbulent spell on Tyneside, where a very public bust-up with Graeme Souness marred the Welshman's final season with the Magpies.

"I knew there'd be no problems (working for Mark)," said Bellamy.

"He's known me since I was 18 and he knows how much I like to train, how much I love football, and how important it is for me because it's important to him as well.

"But it's the club I'm at as well. This isn't the goldfish bowl it was at Newcastle so there's not going to be silly stories written about me and that's just what I needed.

"That then leaves me free to concentrate on my football and that's one of the main reasons why I decided to come here because I can just get on with it.

"That's the most important thing at a club like Blackburn. It's not about what you do off the pitch, or what you're not doing, it's about getting down to playing football and playing as well as you can.

"I'm not saying I'm any different to the person I was at Newcastle, but what I do here is no concern to anyone else and that's the way it should be."

Although Bellamy was glad to escape the glare of the media spotlight at Newcastle, he still found it a wrench to detach himself from one of the biggest club sides in English football.

Perennial underachievers they may be, but few would deny Newcastle are a big club with big expectations, who could provide Bellamy with the kind of stage he craves to showcase his considerable talents, so it was a big step for him to give that up and join a team that was embroiled in a relegation fight this time last year.

But Bellamy could see the bigger picture and, after buying into Hughes' vision of the future, he decided if he was going to join Rovers then it was important he threw himself into it with all his vigour.

As a result, he shunned the bright lights of Manchester, the preferred base for many of his new team-mates, and bought a property within walking distance of his new club's training ground - an outward sign, he says, of his commitment to Rovers.

"I thought if I'm going to come here then I've got to give it a real go, so I bought a house within five minutes of Brockhall," said Bellamy.

"I've probably committed more by being here than I have anywhere else because I knew this was a big stage in my career.

"I leave here late every day because I really enjoy my football and I am working with people like Eddie (Niedzwiecki) who are really mad on the game as well.

"We spend a lot of time talking about the game, even when we are not training. Stuff like what I can do to improve, and how we can improve as a team.

"Every day is really fulfilling for me and it's something I want to be part of.

"The only thing I had to get used to coming here was the different level of expectation.

"When I was at Newcastle, it was always the Champions League.

"Our aim was to get in that top four every season and if we didn't achieve that it was a major disappointment.

"I remember getting booed one season when we finished fifth and no-one stayed behind after the final game for the lap of honour.

"That was what was expected of you but then coming here, it was a little bit different.

"When I did sign, though, I said straight away I wanted to get into Europe with Blackburn.

"Some people said that was a little bit far fetched at the time, but we are 20-odd games into the season now and it's a realistic target."

If Rovers are to achieve their goal then the form and fitness of Bellamy will be crucial to their chances over the next few months.

So far, Bellamy has found the net 11 times in 21 appearances for the club - an impressive ratio in a season that has been constantly interrupted by injuries.

That's why Hughes pulled out all the stops to bring him to Rovers last summer, and it was that belief which ultimately persuaded Bellamy that Blackburn was the right club for him.

"Everything he said to me was impressive," added Bellamy, reflecting on Hughes' sales pitch.

"The way he wanted me to play and everything - it was all for the team.

"He said we're just lacking this little bit extra, which we think you can give us, and we can go on from here'.

"Even when I haven't been playing, the other players have really come on under the gaffer and we've got a really good squad now.

"Everyone works really hard in training. This is the hardest club I've ever been at from a training point of view, but then I knew that from my time with Wales.

"Little things like that made me sure this was the right move for me."