FIRSTLY, the opening 20-odd minutes on Saturday resembled a cup tie between a non-league side and a Championship one, writes Simon Smith.

As good as Huddersfield were, Rovers made it far too easy early on.

A clumsy penalty may have been the catalyst for a decent point, rather than great play from Rovers, but seven points out of nine going into the derby is good going.

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One thing that stood out post-game was the amount of folk who were furious that ‘the likes of Huddersfield’ were taking points off us.

The club were, ironically, technically the architects of their own downfall as the £1.8million paid as a sell-on clause for Jordan Rhodes arguably financed the loan signings of the impressive pair Aaron Mooy and Rajiv van La Parra.

It’s about time we all realised where we are in the scheme of things. What were ‘big’ names and ‘small’ names don’t necessarily remain so forever.

These days the likes of Bournemouth, Watford and Brighton are upwardly mobile whilst Bolton, Blackpool and, yes to some extent, Rovers currently languish.

Struggling for results against Huddersfield, Bristol City and Burton is the standard because we have been all at sea for years now.

In short, a steady if dull and safe Premier League team sacked a steady if tactically dull manager, then appointed extremely badly, got relegated, made a couple of rushed appointments and hit the iceberg.

Gary Bowyer took over, rebuilt and steadied the ship, took us to the cusp of the play-offs before Rovers approached the end of the long ‘strait’.

One exit meant keeping Bowyer and led to a steady Championship future with steady, if occasionally tactically limited, manager.

The other meant sacking a good man and using the onset of FFP release to attract a ‘character’ manager and invest and push for a play-off place.

The owners phut-phutted briefly down the second option before quickly turning and setting off back down the strait all the way back to 2012/2013.

The future is unwritten, but if the fight remains in the players Rovers will stay up and move slowly back up to where we are free from these dire straits.