SINCE hanging up the boots David Mail has brought a different meaning to the phrase ‘journeyman’ as he continues to clock up the miles in a world as far away from football as imaginable.

The former Blackburn Rovers and Hull City defender will watch from afar though as his old sides go head to head in Sunday’s crucial Premier League fixture, praying the wheels don’t come off for either in their remarkable journeys into the game’s promised land.

Now a long-distance lorry driver, the man who admits he ‘has never really followed football’ agonisingly failed to reach the game’s heady heights himself but knows more than most the impact top-flight relegation could have on either club.

A trio of play-off defeats at Ewood Park during the 1980’s left him with no personal experience of playing against England’s best but the collective joy felt in his home city of Hull during their rise from obscurity has left him in no doubt the Premier League is the place to be.

He said: “It is anyone’s ambition to reach the Premier League and so anyone would have felt disappointed to keep missing out the way we did at Rovers.

“The problem was when we got to the run-in after Christmas, other teams were bringing players in but we had no money and so once we got a couple of injuries our form stuttered and we found it almost impossible to get out of that division.

“I suppose that could become one of the big problems for Blackburn if the worst did happen.

"They would not have the money other clubs do in that league and it could become a real struggle to ever get back.

“Other teams have proved once you go down into the Championship, it is not easy to come straight back.

"I know how difficult it was for a club like Blackburn to get themselves there in the first place.”

After almost 250 appearances for Rovers between 1982-1990, the former Aston Villa trainee left Rovers for Hull after the death of his first wife in 1990, with three play-off defeats and a Full Members Cup Wembley win to his name.

His Hull career was spent kicking around in the lower leagues but, since retiring, he has witnessed their meteoric rise to the Premier League and the revival it has had for everyone around him.

“You have to do everything to stay up,” he said. “You look at what has happened at Hull and there is no doubt promotion has breathed new life into the whole city.

"Relegation could have the opposite effect.

“The crowds have got better at Hull and the problem for Blackburn is relegation could lose them even more fans because of the amount of Premier League clubs there are around them.

“This year people have been coming to Hull and boosting the local community and economy, whereas before many people just regarded it as a dead-end place, falsely.

“When I was at Blackburn, in what was the old second division, we regularly played in front of just 5,000 fans.

"The concern has to be would that return with relegation?”

Mail, 46, with his wife a mad Tigers’ fan, will have mixed emotions on Sunday as he craves for both clubs to lift themselves out of their current mire.

He unashamedly admits he has never been an avid follower of the game, even during his playing career, but insists that does not stop him from caring about two clubs that have played huge parts in his life.

“My wife is a big Hull fan and so is everyone around me,” he said.

“I spent most of my career at Blackburn though so I have great memories of what a family club they were.

"I am just hoping they both stay up.

“To say I don’t care about football would be wrong, after all I am a treasurer of 12 football clubs in Hull at the moment, but I have just never followed the game - I know that sounds strange.

“If you asked me to name more than two current Hull or Blackburn players I would struggle.

"Even when I was a player my managers had to tell me who to mark by numbers, because I just didn’t know the names of any players.

“I don’t watch football, I never have.

"I drive lorries by night now and at the weekend I am involved in kids’ football so I never get a chance to see what is going on really.”

His apparent indifference to the game should not be misunderstood for any complacency over the career he enjoyed, far from it, as he reflects on some memorable times at Ewood Park in the 1980’s.

The Full Members Cup win in 1987 stands out as a particular highlight - although even that was tinged with sadness.

He said: “I never really got to experience the after-match celebrations because I had to leave straight after the game because my wife was ill.

“It was a great day for the club though and its supporters and something that will stay with me.

"I don’t have the winners medal any more, though.

“There was a supporter who worked on Blackburn market with a ‘wasting’ disease and I gave him it.

“My wife now, who is a big football fan, has never forgiven me for that.”