CARLSBERG don’t do football club exits, but if they did...they might mirror how Scott Sellars’ time at Ewood Park came to an end.

“If you’re going to finish anywhere it might as well be with a Wembley win,” said the former midfielder, who signed off his Rovers career with a play-off winners medal beneath the famous old Twin Towers, after Mike Newell’s penalty put them in the Premier League.

“It was my last game for the club,” added Sellars, who returned to first club Leeds that summer following their title win.

“I was out of contract that year. I had been at Blackburn for six seasons so I was pleased to get them up.

“It was a good way to end.”

It made it all the sweeter for the left sided midfielder that it came at the fourth time of asking, putting to bed a hat-trick of play-off heartbreaks in the blue and white halves.

Rovers had finished in fifth place in each season from 1987/88 to 1989/1990 under manager Don Mackay.

Their first attempt to get up resulted in a two-legged semi final defeat to Chelsea. The next year they threw away a 3-1 first leg final lead over Crystal Palace to lose the second leg 3-0 at Selhurst Park, after extra time. A semi-final defeat to Swindon followed 12 months later.

With Jack Walker’s millions on board and lofty ambitions for the club, Mackay made way for Kenny Dalglish in the early part of the 1991/92 campaign. Bigger signings, such as £1million men Mike Newell and Roy Wegerle, brought bigger expectations.

Sellars was hoping for the best this time around. But he admits there was a point where he feared the worst, after sneaking into sixth spot on the final day of the season.

“We’d been flying - we were 12 points clear at one point - but then we hit a wall,” he explained.

“Mike Newell got injured and it affected us a lot and we just scraped into the play-offs at the end of the season.

“I had scored a goal to make it 2-2 at home to Sunderland, which meant that if we won the last game we were in the top six.

“We won 3-1 at Plymouth to go through.

“But when we went 2-0 down at home Derby after about 12 minutes of the first semi-final game I thought ‘Here we go again’.

“There were flashbacks to the Palace and Swindon games for me.

“We were shell-shocked. Derby were a good team but we thought that with everyone fit we could beat anyone.

“We got a goal back quite quickly to settle us down and we won that leg 4-2.”

Despite a 2-1 defeat at Derby in the second leg, Rovers had done enough to book a Wembley showdown with Leicester.

“When you go to Wembley you’ve just got to win. Everything else goes into the background,” said Sellars.

“We got the penalty to go 1-0 up.

“Leicester put us under a lot of pressure in the second half so it was a massive relief (when the final whistle went), especially for the players who had been through the disappointments before.

“There were some good signings that year. Mike Newell was a big player for us - him and David Speedie were a good front pair; Colin Hendry came back; Alan Wright came in at left back and I enjoyed playing with him; but those who had been there a while stepped up as well.”

Rovers had come a long way in Sellars’ six years with the club, with the appointment of Dalglish the turning point in his eyes.

“There had been a lot of rumours for a couple of weeks but we all thought it was a bit of a joke,” he explained.

“He’d just left Liverpool, so I don’t think we really believed it.

“It was a bit of a shock when he walked into the changing room.

“But he was good to work for - a good guy, and a legend as a player and manager so he had massive respect from everyone.

“He knew the game and what he wanted and didn’t complicate it.

“He made the environment a lot of fun, but we knew what we had to do.”

He added: “The key bit was Kenny Dalglish coming in and taking over and the influx of players that, I suppose, changed how the football club looked.

“The joke was that up to then most of the cars in the car park were Escorts. After that there were BMWs and Mercedes.

“Behind the scenes Jack Walker was putting something in place for the stadium and the facilities.

“You could see things were going to happen for the club.”