Following the recent supermarket vegetable shortage, Blackburn Rovers’ footballers could be given a chance of learning a new career for when their playing days come to an end.
This idea is said to originate from the club’s head office in India. Here Venky’s have a vested interest in vegetables, especially in regard to accompanying their chicken meals. Their plan is to turn parts of Brockhall training site into a nursery garden, to be used as a horticultural teaching facility. It would be known as ‘Rooting For The Rovers’.
But to some cynical Rovers fans, Venky’s have already lost the plot. They may be hedging their bets with another attempt by them to try to sell off part of the training ground land. This was after a previous attempt to sell off part of Brockhall’s training facility which failed.
This latest scheme includes not only allowing footballers to learn all about gardening and horticulture, it would also encourage local residents to get involved in gardening projects too. Perhaps if a strong interest in allotments and growing fruit and vegetables could be encouraged, then maybe local residents wouldn’t be as opposed to land at Brockhall being sold off.
Though it must be debatable whether our club owners would receive a similar kind of financial reward for this land being turned into allotments, compared to the kind of returns house building would yield, it sounds like chicken feed. The plot thickens.
Brian Clough famously said: ‘We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately the game was played on grass’. Footballers are known for having an affinity to the land environment because of this. After all, they make their living running about on a patch of grass kicking around a bag of wind. So when their playing days come to an end, what more fitting place could they find to work than outside on a windy green field?
There was one example were the boot was on the other foot though. One of the most famous Rovers fans ever to have lived, acclaimed author, Alfred Wainwright, said his favourite patch of grass that he had ever walked upon was the centre circle of Ewood Park.
So what kind of fruit and vegetables would Rovers players like to grow, cabbages or turnips? It sounds like a lot of thought is going into this project and at this stage of the game, nobody is spilling the beans.