RECORD BREAKERS: How thrilling 1954-55 season was just the start for Blackburn Rovers legend Bryan Douglas

The 1954-55 campaign ultimately ended in frustration as Johnny Carey’s side, for the second of four years running, narrowly missed out on promotion from Division Two.

However it will forever remain etched in the memory of the supporters who flocked to witness it.

Rovers, fired by their lethal front five of Tommy Briggs, Eddie Quigley, Eddie Crossan, Bobby Langton and Frank Mooney, scored an incredible 114 goals in 42 league games.

That remains a club record – as does their 9-0 home win over Middlesbrough on November 6, 1954.

Briggs, remarkably, failed to score in that rout.

But he more than made up for that when he helped himself to seven goals in an 8-3 victory at home to Bristol Rovers on February 5, 1955.

That, too, remains a club record, which in all probability, will never be broken.

The predatory Briggs finished the season as Rovers’ leading marksman with 33 goals.

But he was ably supported by future Rovers manager Quigley, with 28, fellow schemer Crossan, with 18, and wing wizards Mooney, with 16, and Langton, with 13.

Briggs, Quigley, Crossan and Langton will go down as club legends.

But little did they know that they would eventually be usurped by the youngster who made his Rovers debut during the record-breaking season.

Bryan Douglas was 20 and still undertaking National Service on the east coast when his boyhood dream was realised on September 4, 1954.

It would be another year before Douglas would pull on the famous blue and white halved shirt for the second time.

However that afternoon at Meadow Lane was the scene of the start of one of the great Ewood Park careers.

But Douglas, now 81 and as passionate about his beloved Rovers as ever, admits it may never have got off the ground had Bill Shankly had got his way.

“I was coming to the end of my National Service when I got a surprise call from my commanding officer saying that I’d been picked to play against Notts County,” said Douglas, who went on to score 115 goals in 503 appearances for Rovers.

“We lost 3-1 and I didn’t break any pots, but I was told by the manager Carey that he would be sending for me the following Wednesday as we had Derby County away, but he never did, which I never forgave him for!

“The lads went to Derby, won 3-0 and that was it for me for 12 months.

“But it was the start and in the summer of 1955 I got married, and I always look back on that as my lucky omen. Soon after I was back for the first team – and, once I got in, I never really looked back.

“My first game back was at home to Stoke City. I think the game had only been going about 15 minutes when Langton put one on a plate for me.

“We then went to Bristol Rovers, and the following game, at home to Doncaster, Carey dropped Tommy Briggs and put John Willis into the team. It was an awful game and afterwards my dad said, ‘you’re not taking people on. Your strength is taking the ball past people and you’re not doing that, you’re passing it too early’.

“Anyway the next game came around, at Bury, and I thought I’d be out. But I was in there, along with Crossan, Briggs, Quigley and Langton, and I decided to take my dad’s advice.

“I scored a goal and got a penalty, then the following week I got two, and I started to get one or two headlines. We went to West Ham and had a good game there, and there were quite a few of the London press there, and if you did well in front of them, they’d take notice.

“Later in the season I got a phone call from the manager Carey who told me to come and get my boots because I’d been picked for England B, where I played with the likes of Tommy Taylor, Duncan Edwards and Ernie Taylor. Then later on I got picked for England U23s, playing alongside Brian Clough, before in 1957 I walked into the ground one morning and I was congratulated on winning a call-up to the England squad.

“It was some rise.”

And it was one which would have come as no surprise to a certain future legendary Liverpool manager.

“I was doing my National Service and I played for the camp side, and one afternoon I noticed two gentlemen on the halfway line, and after the match one of them came up to me,” remembers Douglas, who won 36 caps for his country, playing in the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.

“He was the manager of Grimsby Town and he wanted me to have a trial with them. I said I was already at Blackburn Rovers, so he apologised.

“But two weeks later he was there again and he said, ‘if I have a word with Blackburn, would you be prepared to come to Grimsby?’

“At that time I’d just met my wife to be and I used to come home to Blackburn at weekends to see her and play for the reserves. So I said, ‘thanks but no thanks’.

“Anyway I was demobbed, and on my return I got into the first team and I remember a game at Huddersfield Town. We were kicking in before the match and I saw the same guy who’d had a word with me down at the old RAF camp. I asked Quigley who he was and he said it was Bill Shankly, who was then the Huddersfield manager.

“Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t have been courting and if Blackburn had ever given permission?”

Shankly’s loss was very much Rovers’ gain as Douglas helped the club to promotion, at long last, to the top flight in 1958.

But in 1954-55, and when he truly broke into the side the following season, Douglas was ‘very much the apprentice’.

“Tommy Briggs was phenomenal, he wasn’t particularly a very clever footballer but he could finish,” said Douglas. “I know Simon Garner is the club’s all-time leading goalscorer but if you look at Tommy’s scoring ratio, it’s fantastic.

“You’ve got to remember in that forward line I was very much the apprentice. I didn’t answer them back. You had Crossan, who had played for Northern Ireland, Briggs, the big goalscorer, Quigley, the £26,000 British record signing, and then Langton, who had played for England.

“I only spoke when I was spoken to and I remember Bobby Langton (pictured) used to come up to me at half-time sometimes and slap me across the face and say, ‘pass the ball’! But they all helped me. I’ve got a lot to thank those guys for.”