When was blackburn rovers founded

Following the appointment of Kenny Dalglish as manager in , Blackburn earned promotion just in time to join the newly-formed Premier League. Once in the top flight, Walker went one step further and broke the English transfer record by paying 3. It was this shrewd acquisition that led to Blackburn reaching the stars once again; led by a partnership of Shearer and Chris Sutton which resulted in more than 50 goals between the two of them, Blackburn won the Premier League in Blackburn's typical line up in the season That Cinderella story was, however, the end of Blackburn's time in the spotlight.

Chris Sutton got injured whereas key players like David Batty and Alan Shearer, were grabbed by other clubs. With the championship team broken up even quicker than it was assembled, the club was relegated from the Premier League in The passing of Jack Walker in would mean that Blackburn no longer had the same economical strength.

Since the season the crest has been on the team's shirt. The first version of the crest was consisting of the Lancashire rose with the B. FC initials below. Later versions added a circle with the team name and establishing year.

Also at the bottom, the latin words "Arte Et Labore" could be found which in English translates to "By skill and by labour" and remains from an old town motto of Blackburn.

Birmingham City FC. Titles in total: 3 Premier League titles: 1 First participation: First title: Jack Baldwin, the son of a wealthy Blackburn businessman, also agreed to play for the team. Syckelmoore, a former student of St. So also did Thomas Greenwood, who was appointed captain of Blackburn Rovers. His two brothers, Harry Greenwood and Doctor Greenwood, also played for the club. Two other brothers, Fred Hargreaves and John Hargreaves, who both worked in the legal profession, became important figures at the club.

They had played football for Malvern College and advocated that Blackburn Rovers adopted the quartered shirt design of their school shirts.

However, they suggested that the traditional green should be changed to the light blue worn by the Cambridge University football team. Jimmy Brown was another local man who joined the team. Blackburn Rovers played their first game on 11th December The game ended in a draw. The team played its early games at Oozehead, a piece of farmland on the road to Preston. In they began playing matches at Pleasant Cricket Ground.

According to the author of The Book of Football : "It was a modest beginning, and as the enthusiasts had no idea of the future that was in store, no complete records were kept for the first few seasons.

On 4th November Blackburn Rovers played its first floodlit game. As Mike Jackman has pointed out in his book, Blackburn Rovers: An Illustrated History : "The visitors were Accrington and the ground was illuminated by the Gramme light - one being situated at the east end of the Meadows and the other at the west end.

Each light was attached to a scaffold that rose some 30 to 40ft from the ground. An 8hp portable engine was required to work the battery and it was said that the system provided the equivalent of some 6, candle power. However, it was felt necessary to paint the ball white to aid both players and spectators.

Blackburn Rovers was not the best football team in Blackburn. Whereas Rovers was mainly made up of players who attended public schools, the Blackburn Olympic team largely contained men from the working-class and was funded by Sidney Yates of the local iron foundry. The two clubs played each other on 15th February but Olympic, one of the best teams in the country, won However, after beating Enfield in the first round they lost to Nottingham Forest They had better luck in the Lancashire Cup and got to the final before being beaten by Darwen in front of 10, spectators.

It became clear that Blackburn Rovers would have to persuade some better players to join the club. McIntyre was attracted to the town by his appointment to run the Castle Inn. Another footballer who had learnt his trade in Scotland, Fergie Suter, who had been playing for rivals Darwen, also joined Blackburn.

This enraged Darwen who accused Blackburn of paying Suter for his services. At this time football professionalism was illegal.

However, Darwen did not make an official complaint as it was well known that Suter had given up his career as a stonemason as soon as he arrived in Lancashire. McIntyre and Suter had both played their early football in Scotland. So also did their third signing, Jimmy Douglas who had played for Paisley and Renfrew. Blackburn Rovers played Darwen in a friendly on 27th November In an attempt to embarrass Blackburn Rovers for recruiting Scottish players, Darwen officials announced that their team would only include men who had been "Darwen born and bred".

The score was when in the second-half the players began fighting after an incident involving Fergie Suter. The crowd joined in and the referee was forced to abandon the game. The men who ran Blackburn Rovers also decided to invest in a new ground. A wall was erected along the sides of the pitch in an attempt to stop crowd invasions. The first game at the new stadium was against their old rivals Blackburn Olympic.

A crowd of 6, people saw Blackburn Rovers win Blackburn Rovers was now one of the best clubs in England. In , Blackburn became the first provincial team to reach the final of the FA Cup.

Their opponents were Old Etonians who had reached the final on five previous occasions. However, Blackburn had gone through the season unbeaten and was expected to become the first northern team to win win the game. The Old Etonians scored after eight minutes and despite creating a great number of chances, Blackburn was unable to obtain an equalizer in the first-half.

Early in the second-half George Avery was seriously injured and Blackburn Rovers was reduced to ten men. Blackburn Rovers did even better in that year's Lancashire Cup. After victories against Accrington Wanderers , Church they beat Blackburn Olympic in the semi-final.

Blackburn won the cup by beating Accrington in the final. However, an injury hit Rovers were beaten in the second round by local rivals Darwen. The Blackburn Times reported that this was a major surprise as the "play was so much in the Rovers' favour that Howorth the goalkeeper never handled the ball throughout the match.

In the season Blackburn Rovers added another outsider into the team. John Inglis, a Scottish international, had recently been playing for Glasgow Rangers. The Blackburn Times reported: "There is one point about Blackburn Rovers that does not give entire satisfaction and this is the introduction of Inglis of the Glasgow Rangers. It is "hard lines" on Sowerbutts or whoever else is supplanted, that after the faithful services of the past he should be pushed out in this manner, and besides that there is a class of people in the town who would rather lose the Cup on their merits than win it with the aid of a specially introduced stranger.

The FA carried out an investigation into the case discovered that Inglis was working as a mechanic in Glasgow and was not earning a living playing football for Blackburn Rovers.

John Inglis played in the final against Queens Park at outside left. Cup that they won in season. Back row, left to right: Joseph Lofthouse,. Blackburn Olympic, though less well known than Blackburn Rovers, hold a special place in the history of Association Football.

The club, of working-class origins, was formed in with the amalgamation of two working men's clubs from Blackburn; Black Star and James Street. Blackburn Olympic was formed in opposition to the Rovers, then regarded as a 'gentleman's club'.

In they never lost a match, and when the East Lancashire Charity Cup was first contested in , Olympic won it. Its FA Cup success in was the first triumph by a team from the industrial working class. The cup had previously been won only by teams of wealthy amateurs from the so-called 'Home counties', and Olympic's victory marked a turning point in the sport's transition from a pastime for upper-class gentlemen to a professional sport.

Blackburn Rovers had reached the final and lost in but their team was made up of what was essentially a middle-class team which would not have felt out of place on the public school playing fields of southern England. The social make up of the Olympic spectators was different too. For the final, Olympic took 1, supporters on special trains, though outnumbered in the crowd of 12,, they made far more noise. A London paper reported, "London witnessed an invasion of Northern barbarians on Sunday - hot blooded Lancastrians, sharp of tongue, rough and ready, of uncouth garb and strange speech.

A tribe of Sudanese Arabs let lose on the Strand would not arouse such amusement and curiosity. Strange oaths fell upon Southern ears and curious words, but expressive, filled the air.

Olympic went on to win the game When the draw for the semi-finals was made, the club was paired with Queen's Parkin one match and Rovers with Notts County in the other, setting up the possibility of the two teams meeting in the final. The Olympic team, however, were defeated 4—0 by their Scottish opponents. The club lodged an appeal with the FA based on the encroachment onto the pitch of some of the 16, spectators, but to no avail.

Rovers went on to defeat Queen's Park in the final. Olympic was never again able to achieve its level of success. In the —85 season, Olympic lost in the second round of the FA Cup to rivals Rovers, who went on to cement their position as the town's leading team by winning the competition for the second consecutive season.

Blackburn Olympic's chief rivalry was with Blackburn Rovers. The first match between the two clubs was a game in February , which resulted in a 3—1 win for Olympic.

The clubs played each other forty times, but Olympic won only six of these matches. The rivalry became especially fierce in September after Olympics FA Cup victory of , amid accusations that Rovers were using underhand tactics in attempts to "poach" Olympic players. However, the grip of public school sides had been forever broken by Olympic's success, and Association Football became for ever more closely linked with the working-class. Football was gradually abandoned by the middle-classes as the working-classes took over as spectators and players.

The game became imbued with working-class values that became ever more socially distinct from the middle-class. However, football started to become big business and what middle-class businessman would not want some of that? The Lancashire, the cradle of capitalism, was also the cradle of professional football. Blackburn played its part in that development as Blackburn was at the forefront of the movement which forced the FA to accept professionalism. Blackburn Rovers were also the first club to lure Scottish palyers south of the border.

In , after the FA refused to sanction professionalism, a meeting of Lancashire clubs exerted pressure by forming the British Football Association. The threat of a schism within the sport was averted in when the FA agreed to legalise professionalism. In a town the size of Blackburn, however, Olympic found it hard to compete for spectators and sponsors with the longer-established and more successful Rovers, and as a result could not pay wages on a par with those offered by that club or by other professional clubs in Lancashire.

In the club's committee was forced to reduce the players' wages to a quarter of what was being offered by Preston North End. Many of the team's key players walked out in response and were quickly signed by wealthier clubs. The Football League, the world's first association football league, was formed in by the leading clubs of the Lancashire and Staffordshire. Aston Villa chairman William McGregor, the driving force behind the new competition, put in place a rule stating that only one club from each town or city could join, and chose Rovers, rather than Olympic, to be Blackburn's entrant.

Some of the clubs not invited to join the League, including Olympic, formed The Combination, but this was a poorly organised competition which attracted only small crowds and collapsed before the end of the —89 season.

Beset by heavy debts, the club's committee announced in early that all professional players were being released from their contracts with immediate effect and that henceforth the club would employ only amateur players.