JOHN LENNON sang of those 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. But that would need updating were Lennon in town today.

Thanks to Ian Ashbee there will be 4,014 when Hull City arrive at Ewood Park.

Ashbee is hardly on the same planet as Lennon in terms of fame, but as a few more people now know, he is Hull City's captain.

That's Hull City of the Premier League, proud possessors of three points after the first top-flight game in their 104-year history last Saturday against Fulham.

Today is their second and Ashbee will be again at the front as Hull emerge onto Ewood Park.

Ashbee will walk tall, which is saying something given that three years ago his doctor surveyed his damaged leg and said: "You could have lost the ability to walk. But we think we've got it in time."

Ashbee had a bone condition, one rectified by 14 holes drilled in his knee.

From Birmingham, he had started out at Derby County, but was released after three years and then spent five at Cambridge United.

They are now a non-League club and Hull were going that way too when Ashbee joined six years ago.

But today he is a Premier League footballer who has captained his club in all four divisions. And he can walk.

"I'd felt the knee a year before and it was niggling," Ashbee said of the osteochondral defect.

"I didn't think it was going to be as drastic as it was. Then they drilled the 14 holes in my knee and I knew it was a different story.

"I might not have been walking again, never mind playing football and not walking again is a different scenario to not playing football again.

"I was lucky. I wasn't thinking about not playing again at that point, I was thinking about not being able to go down to the park with my kids and stuff like that.

"That's how serious it was. But we were lucky enough that the bone had not come away and we just drilled the holes and luckily enough it grew back."

You never know what Hull City might do this season.