Simon Garner

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Simon Garner Every League club has a folk hero; a player who becomes at first a favourite with the fans and then something more: a legend, a totem, a symbol of everything supporters believe their club stands for. There is Tosh Chamberlain at Fulham, Rodney Marsh at Queen's Park Rangers, Peter Osgood at Chelsea, and at Blackburn Rovers, there is Simon Garner. Even today, 10 years after he last played for the club, the chant: "There's Only One Simon Garner" still regularly echoes round Ewood Park. Quite how a man who never even got a kick in the Premiership could have become the club's spiritual mascot might seem a bit of a mystery, but all is explained if you pick up his autobiography. For in telling his story - Blackburn's all-time top scorer, a succession of ever-lesser clubs, and a divorce so messy he was sent to prison (where the man-of-the-match award was an ounce of tobacco), right down to his present contentment in Berkshire -- he inadvertently reveals why he had such rapport with the crowd. To the fans, Garner was always one of our own. Even after he'd knocked in a Saturday goal or two and had pride of place on the back of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, he always had time for a laugh, a fag and a drink with them. Or with anyone, for that matter. Newly signed team-mates were liable to be judged on their ability to smoke or drink,a nd Simon was the man to judge them. He earned good money (£600 a week at its peak), but not silly money. He lived in the town, not on Nob Hill. He drove a decent car, not something out of a Bond film. He never pretended. No airs and graces off the pitch, and no dives in the box on it. And if Rovers were a goal or two to the bad, and time was ticking on and you had no more fingernails to bite, there was always a chance that Gamer would turn it around by popping a couple in. But, above all, in the pre-Jack Walker days, the club's fans knew that if there was a Blackburn occasion, good or ill, then there would be Garner, chest puffed out, doing his level best. He was there with Jim Smith (who concluded a rollocking on smoking by offering him a cigar), there when Jim Iley arrived ("very dour… he made Howard Wilkinson look like Ken Dodd"), he played and drank with Howard Kendall, and was with Bobby Saxton's side when, in a vital game against Wolves, their manager, Tommy Docherty, sat in on the Blackburn team-talk and then calmly stood up saying "Don't worry about our lot; they're crap". He was there for the descent into the Third Division, the climb out of it, and those agonising seasons when, three years in a row, Blackburn reached the play-offs, only to lose. Even Garners high times had a Blackburnish quality: a win at Wembley in 1987, but it was only the Full-Members' Cup final; and as Garner broke the club's scoring record in 1989 the celebrations had hardly started before news came through of an unfolding disaster across the Pennines at Hillsborough. Three years later, Garner was still here as King Kenny and Uncle Jack arrived to transform the club. And when Blackburn reached the play-off finals at Wembley, Dalglish made sure the old forward was given one of the three non-playing places on the bench. So there he was, smoking agitatedly through an entire pack as his club reached the Premiership, just like any fan. And when, at Blackburn Town Hall, the team were feted on their return, there, of course, was Gamer again, grinning and happy and slightly inebriated. And what did the crowd sing? "There's Only One Simon Garner..." Garner may not have scored a hatful of premiership goals, won a plethora of international caps, but what he did do was serve our club faithfully for 14 years of his life. He went up and down three divisions with us, and scored a hut full of goals in each of those divisions. His goals got us into the play-offs three years running, and if we'd seized an earlier chance, who knows - he may have scored a hat full in the Premiership. Probably not the most gifted player ever, or the hardest worker, but second only to Shearer in terms of his greatness in the history of Blackburn Rovers. 09:56:24 Vote Garner. Not that you weren't going to already, of course.... Cheshire Blue