​Another night of celebration at Ewood, Preston fan John Smith revels in victory over neighbours

​​Prior to Friday night's televised game since hostilities resumed on a regular basis in 2015, we had only lost once in our seven previous trips to the home of our East Lancashire "friends".
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As in the lyrics of the upbeat The Housemartins song ìt turned out to be "Happy Hour" again for our travelling hordes as they celebrated a late Liam Lindsay winner on what turned out to be another joyous occasion at Ewood Park.

Like the majority of our games this season, this one could easily have gone either way or ended in a draw which would probably have been a fair result.

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However, as a fan you really cannot beat the feeling of a last minute winner against your closest local rivals in your biggest away game of the season, although I would imagine quite a fair number of our fans will have woken up on Saturday morning with bruised limbs judging by the frenzied scenes of delirium I witnessed in the aftermath of the celebrations.

Preston North End's Alan Browne is congratulated on scoring his team’s first goal in the derbyPreston North End's Alan Browne is congratulated on scoring his team’s first goal in the derby
Preston North End's Alan Browne is congratulated on scoring his team’s first goal in the derby

Like a Mr Kipling cake I thought that our first goal when Brad Potts sublime long crossfield ball from the half way line was smashed into the net by Alan Browne was also exceedingly good.

For me Browne turned in another phenomenal man-of-the-match performance and his superb goal will almost certainly be a contender for our goal of the season.

It was a goal which came out of the blue from nothing and reminded me a bit of a memorable one scored for us here by the legendary Alex Bruce 45 years ago

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This was far from an easy win though and when the home side pulled a goal back in the opening minutes of the second half they seemed to have the bit between their teeth and at that time I feared they might even go on to get a winner.

However when we brought on the inspirational Ched Evans just after the hour mark, I thought the pendulum swung back in our favour as we then offered more up front in what was a typical blood and thunder local derby .

The scenes at the end of the game were of a similar passionate nature to the one seen after our 4-1 win here 11 months ago.

While this time there was no snow our players and fans were again smiling together in a winter wonderland.

Back to back wins have now seen us re-join the play-off party and I for one am hoping that it will now go on for a while longer and that this barnstorming win will not be the last dance.