AS Tim Sherwood stepped forward to lift the Premier League trophy in front of Blackburn Rovers’ delirious travelling army, you got the sense life at Ewood Park was never going to be the same again.

The dramatic events on that sunny May afternoon at Anfield back in 1995 should have been the start of ‘something great’ for English football’s new upstarts, with a squad brimming with talent and enough funds to threaten the game’s established order of power.

Less than five years later though, Rovers, and many of the squad who had lifted the trophy were facing up to life in the Championship after a dramatic fall from grace ended in relegation from the top flight.

As he reflects on the rollercoaster Premier League adventure at Rovers during the 1990s, before joining Newcastle United in 1999, Kevin Gallacher admits mistakes were made and dates their downturn in fortunes to even just a few hours after the club’s ‘greatest ever moment’.

He said: “That week was the happiest week of my life. Colin Hendry was ringing me at 7am saying ‘I have just corked open another bottle of champagne’. I was like ‘Colin, I only left you an hour ago’.

“For a week we just partied until we had the do at Ewood and had another big party. You were going on alcohol. We never had an open top bus though, which the lads were disappointed about. We had to do everything within the ground.

“We couldn’t go and see the mayor at the town hall because the balcony was deemed unsafe. In a lot of our eyes we never celebrated it properly. I think that is why we were still celebrating it in our heads the following season when we struggled.

“That was almost the start of the end. That summer, we were linked with very good players the likes of Zidane and Dugarry. But we didn’t want to do it and that was when we started going over the peak of the mountain and coming back down again.

“There was a change to the club, a change in camaraderie. At the time it was not for the good. We should have been on a plateau but it was changing even then.”

Having only been promoted to the new Premier League through the play-offs in 1992, few could have envisaged Rovers being crowned champions of England just three years later.

But, with Walker’s money and Dalglish’s leadership, Alan Shearer and co completed one of football’s most unlikely stories when they pipped Manchester United to the title in 1995.

“I don’t think what we did will ever be done again,” said Gallacher. “You have to be billionaires now, millionaire people like Jack are not enough. In today’s game, look at people like Kaka going for £50m. It is ridiculous, but that was Kenny and Jack’s fault because they bought Chris Sutton for £5m.

“People were telling me that he had to be really coaxed into buying Blackburn but, by God, when he decided to he put his heart and soul into it. If he could have kept it going for five or six years and had won another couple of titles he would have become one of the game’s all-time greats.

“Unfortunately we could not keep it going at Blackburn. A big catalogue of things went wrong but Kenny Dalglish moving upstairs was the real catalyst. Him and Ray Harford were the Morecambe and Wise of football.

“It didn’t work when Kenny became director of football to let Ray take over. He eventually started to bring his own men in but he didn’t do it early enough because he felt we all deserved our chance. You can’t stand still in football.”

With Dalglish already a distant memory, Walker died in 2000 of lung cancer to bring about the end of what Gallacher describes as Rovers’ golden era.

“The pair were true club legends“, he said. “That is why we had success, we had so many great players. We were all pieces of the jigsaw. People say Kenny spent big and spoilt it by spending £5m on Sutton and £3.3m for Shearer but Kenny was buying bits of a jigsaw “Other clubs didn’t fancy paying it but Kenny did, he put a jigsaw together and it came together two years earlier than he wanted it to.

“Jack put his money where his mouth was. Kenny did his due diligence on every player he bought and made sure they were right for Blackburn Rovers football club.

“Once Jack passed away in 2000, Blackburn Rovers big time became a town team. Although he left a trust fund that was there to keep the club going with wages but you can’t spend £5m or £10m on players anymore.”

After Ray Harford’s doomed attempt at taking over Dalglish’s mantle, Roy Hodgson arrived at Ewood Park in the summer of 1997 and immediately set about modernising the East Lancashire outfit.

It paid instant dividends as well, as Gallacher and Sutton formed a prolific attack to help Rovers back into Europe but a poor start to the following season saw them in the relegation zone, bringing an end to Hodgson’s regime and ultimately Gallacher’s.

Brian Kidd’s succession could not save Rovers from relegation to the championship at the end of that season and, soon after, Gallacher moved on to Bobby Robson’s Newcastle.

Gallacher said: “Roy’s first season was totally different. He changed everything around at the club. We were coached brilliantly and were trained and coached as Italians.

“The first season was very intense, no smiles on the faces, but the coaching was fantastic. Everyone knew what everyone was doing. It was run really well but the players wanted to be doing it with smiles on their faces and we never got that.

“In the second season though under him we were trying to play half fit, kept breaking down. Unfortunately Roy got the sack and Brian Kidd came in.

“The relegation was horrible. When you let the club and the fans down it was terrible. We couldn’t get fit. I had a personal battle as well because I had gone from being first choice to fifth choice striker under Kidd.

“I never saw eye to eye with the manager. I had spoke to Kidd a few days before I left for Newcastle and he said he had spoke to Jack Walker and they would give me a new contract because he knew we were happy here.

“I was happy to stay and get them out of the Championship but three days later he sold me to Newcastle. He told me lies, but at that time Newcastle and Bobby Robson – it didn’t look such a bad move.”

While his seven-year love affair at Ewood Park might have ended in bitterness, Gallacher isn’t about to let that ruin what went before it.

He may only have started one Premier League game in that title-winning season, as he recovered from a broken leg, but the Anfield memories will live with him forever.

“I was at Anfield and it was phenomenal,” he said. “I had a walking pot on at the time. It was like a massive shin pad and a mobile ankle brace.

“The thing that always hit me was them shouting across the Man United game had finished and we still had 30 seconds left to play and we started to celebrate. I looked up and Colin Hendry was cuddling Tim Flowers and the game was still being played.

“It was back down like a bang. The club, being such a family orientated club, were scared.

"If we got beat we have lost the league – they were so nervous they hadn’t organised anything.

“Fortunately for us Howard Walker had organised a do at a local bistro in Preston.

"All the guys ended up back there and that night if health and safety had been there the place would have been shut down.

“You had players, the wives and friends all upstairs dancing on the tables to the Drifters.

"People couldn’t believe Blackburn Rovers had done it.”