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It was the day all Burnley fans must, at some point in the last three decades, have feared they would never see; the day their team had the right to stand toe-to-toe with their East Lancashire neighbours at the top table of English football again.
Yet here we both were, at the end of two remarkably different journeys which had taken nearly 44 years.
We were grateful to still have a club to support after the Orient Game, but never was the gap wider, in real terms, than in 1995. Bolton fans looked on bemused as Burnley supporters counted down the minutes of our own relegation to the third tier, in a display of the gallows humour that had seen us through the darkest days of the 1980s.
And we had another bitter pill to swallow in the same month. In just three years, our closest neighbours had been transformed beyond recognition by the blank chequebook of a wealthy old man, and they inevitably became league champions.
"We'll be back" was also bellowed from the terraces at Burnden Park. It was proved correct in the fullness of time, but it was a rocky road.
While flirting on-and-off with relegation back to the basement division, all we could do was take delight in the most expensively-assembled team in football history being humiliated in the Champions League by bank managers and milkmen in a near-empty Ewood.
Hilarious as their forays into Europe were - they were operating on a different footballing planet to Burnley. Two old adversaries, from similar and fiercely-proud small Lancashire towns, had gone their separate ways. Maybe forever.
Stan Ternent made us believe it was possible to rekindle a top tier rivalry again. He couldn't quite take us there before we were hit as hard as most by the ITV Digital fiasco. Steve Cotterill steadied the ship, but never looked like achieving the dream.
In came Owen Coyle, with a style of play which harked back to the glory days at Turf Moor. In his first summer, a teenager from Northern Ireland, who had been brought through the youth team, earned the club a sizable transfer fee. True to the club's traditions, Coyle invested the cash he got for Kyle Lafferty in young British talent, which he blended into a team led by some wily old professionals.
There was no benefactor, no writing and re-writing of transfer records, and no new stadium or thousands of new fans. Yet incredibly, having built slowly from the bottom, little old Burnley defied the odds again, returning to the big time playing the kind of football for which the club was once famed.
And so the date was set: October 18, 2009. We'd suffered for long enough. This was payback time. And almost 3,000 Clarets were prepared to sacrifice their human rights for the day to be there. Who could have blamed any of them - or the thousands watching on TV around the world - for getting carried away when Blake almost burst the Blackburn End net from 25 yards in the first five minutes?
Blake was inexplicably invited onto his right foot by the home defence, and he smashed home Burnley's reward for a bright start.
Even before that, though, they had been given a warning of things to come. David Dunn punted a free kick into the box, and Chris Samba fired over the bar from eight yards after being afforded the time to bring the ball down.
The warning wasn't heeded, and within three minutes the Clarets were pegged back. They failed to deal with another long, high diagonal ball, Franco Di Santo laid it off and home-grown boy Dunn curled a sweet finish into the corner from just inside the penalty area.
El-Hadji Diouf then dragged a shot across goal when he should at least have hit the target after capitalising on some slack defending.
Rovers tried to find their "playmaker", goalkeeper Paul Robinson, at every opportunity. He simply leathered it as far as he could, while his team-mates played for free kicks and throw-ins in the Burnley half.
The home team were desperate to watch, but the Clarets began to look more and more uncomfortable under the bombardment of Robinson's clearances and the recalled Morten Gamst Pederson's long throws.
The Clarets, unchanged from their win over Birmingham two weeks ago, looked to move the ball around, but failed to create much as David Nugent began to look increasingly isolated up front.
Then they got a kick in the teeth which they failed to really recover from until the second half. Brian Jensen almost sent himself dizzy as yet another set piece went sailing towards his back post.
Centre back Chris Samba got his head to the ball and put it across goal. Di Santo could have attacked it, but instead he wrestled with Steve Jordan, who in turn collided with the Burnley keeper as he went for a catch.
The big Dane went sprawling, and everyone stopped. Everyone but for Graham Alexander, whose bizarre header returned it to a sheepish Di Santo who nodded into an empty net. Everyone looked to referee Chris Foy, who awarded the goal, then consulted his assistant after being chased by skipper Steve Caldwell, before confirming that the Clarets would yet again have to come from behind away from home.
In truth the sense of injustice didn't inspire a response, and Samba should have added to the lead, but he headed over from another set play. They didn't have to wait long though.
Caldwell failed to get any purchase on a Blake free kick at the back post, and at the other end Steve Fletcher allowed Rovers left back Pascal Chimbonda into the box, and he made no mistake with his right foot to make it 3-1 two minutes before the break.
Fletcher tried to make amends in the last action of the half, but his a 30-yard effort was kept out by Robinson down to his right.
Something had to change, and Coyle decided to shuffle team shape rather than personnel for the second half, with Fletcher leaving the right to join Nugent in the middle, with Blake and Elliott in the wide positions.
Rovers were happy to surrender territory to protect the lead, and even drew "Oles" from the home crowd whenever they completed a rare couple of passes along the ground.
Fletcher pulled a shot wide before he was replaced by Chris Eagles on the hour, who must surely be knocking the loudest on the manager's door for a starting berth. He had an immediate impact, as he did when coming off the bench against Birmingham.
Skipping over a challenge on half way, he drove at the heart of the defence and released Blake, whose cut-back was scrambled behind before it reached Nugent. From the resulting corner Caldwell headed back across goal but it was again smuggled clear.
Eagles continued to threaten, Elliott probed down the right, but Burnley never looked like breaking down the massed blue and white ranks who had no intention - and no need - of going forward.
We were again reduced to laughing at our neighbours, as their fans poured out of the ground in their droves in the last ten minutes. The introduction of Gael Givet, who made David Dunn look like Kate Moss, also raised a chuckle. I wonder if he uses the same dietician as Jon Parkin?
Just when we were resigned to another disappointing day at Ewood, the home fans who left missed one of the moves of the match which, had it come sooner, would have set up the mother of all grandstand finishes.
Jordan got to the line and pulled it back for Eagles, who swept in from six yards to give the faintest glimmer of hope in the 91st minute.
But it wasn't to be this time. Through gritted teeth, Rovers probably deserved to win on chances, as atrocious as their style of play was, and no matter how dubious their second goal was.
The fact that the final whistle was met with sheer relief, rather than with the secure sense of superiority at the end of previous derby encounters, should offer some crumb of comfort to those of us who never thought we'd see the day.
Our payback is coming. These things just take time when you do things with hard work rather than a blank chequebook.
The bragging rights belong to Rovers again, but could you really bring yourself to brag about a team which plays like that?
Bring on March.