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Teams, tales and tips – a guide to the local game

Blackburn is home to one of only two clubs outside of Manchester and London to have won the Premier League, Jack Walker’s Blackburn Rovers, crowned champions in 1995. But this East Lancashire mill town also ruled the domestic game a century before – even before Rovers became inaugural members of the Football League in 1888. A sea change in English football took place in the longer established FA Cup – with Blackburn at the helm. From its foundation in 1871, the Football Association Challenge Cup was dominated by teams of public school old boys and well-to-do amateurs. Their game involved one player taking the ball as far as he could before being bundled over by the opposition – who then charged upfield in just the same way. Short of catching and carrying, it bore more resemblance to rugby. One team differed. Royal Engineers were innovative exponents of passing and teamwork, the so-called combination game.

The Royal Engineers were also the first team to go on tour, playing in Sheffield in 1873. Watching that day was Jack Hunter, a half-back for Sheffield Heeley. The 1870s also saw football take off in industrial Lancashire. Blackburn alone had a dozen clubs, so many that an Association Challenge Cup was established just for the city itself. The biggest club, Rovers, were formed at the St Leger Hotel on King William Street in 1875. Their main rivals, Blackburn Olympic, were created three years later from an amalgamation of Black Star and James Street. Jack Hunter joined Olympic in 1882. Like many of his later team-mates, he ran a local pub – Olympic’s pitch was even named after its adjoining hostelry, the Hole I’ Th’ Wall. In 2015, the pub was put up for sale, despite local protests.

Back in the 1880s, running a pub and running out for the local club made logistical, even economic sense. To the dismay, even disgust, of the southern amateurs, payments by means of compensation were being made to the tradesmen, weavers and factory workers who comprised the burgeoning teams from Lancashire. The crunch came in 1883. The year before, Rovers had been the first northern club to reach the FA Cup final. After Olympic beat Old Carthusians in the semi-final of 1883, captain and coach Jack Hunter took the team away to Blackpool for several days’ training, revolutionary for the time. For the final against Old Etonians, Hunter took up a centre-half position, constantly organising his defence throughout the game to win the day. The amateur era was over. Then it was Rovers’ turn, winning the cup three times running. All tolled, the trophy stayed in Blackburn for four years straight – and the north or Midlands for the rest of the century. Ironically, the open professionalism that soon came spelled the end for Olympic, whose key players went to wealthier Rovers or Preston. When the Football League was formed by and for the professional clubs of the north in 1888, only one club was allowed per city. Dominant Rovers were Blackburn’s.

The clubs that were left out, Blackburn Olympic, Newton Heath (later Manchester United) and others, formed the short-lived Combination League. In 1889 Olympic folded. The following year, nearby Burnley beat Rovers to win the Lancashire Cup and a new local rivalry was born. The East Lancashire derby saw epic clashes either side of World War I, and again in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Rovers fan Jack Walker would watch from the terraces. Meetings in the modern era were more rare, as steel millionaire Walker bankrolled the moribund Rovers back to the top flight, leaving Burnley behind. It didn’t last. The two shared the same league again in 2000-01, violent derby-day scenes the result and high security the consequence from then on. Walker, meanwhile, died on the eve of that 2000-01 season, his statue at Rovers’ Ewood Park a testament how a working-class local could take on the English football establishment and win.

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Getting Around

Arriving in town, local transport and tips

The nearest major airport to Blackburn is Manchester, 68km (42 miles) away. A train from Manchester International to Blackburn (£15) takes 1hr 30mins, including a change at Bolton. From Manchester Victoria, a half-hourly train (£5) takes about 1hr. From London Euston, the cheapest, quickest route by train is via Preston (3hrs, £50-£80. Adding a PlusBus supplement (£2.50) also allows you to use most local bus services all day once you arrive. Blackburn main station is centrally located and but a fair trek from Ewood Park. Closer is Mill Hill, a 15min walk away – hourly trains (£2.50) from Blackburn take 3min. City Taxis (01254 696 996) is a local cab firm. Transdev Blackburn runs local buses, offering online ticket purchase, including the Blackburn Local 1 one-day pass (£4 on board).

Where to Drink

The best pubs and bars for football fans

Previous Next Right in town on King William Street, you'll find microbrews and a music-savvy crowd at the Drummer's Arms, with early-evening closing during the week. Nearby on Northgate, The Blackburn Times focuses on TV sport, with ten screens and a decorative nod to local football history. Blessed with a jukebox, live music venue Sir Charles Napier on Limbrick also shows sport. An easy hop from the station on main Darwen Street, The Postal Order is a large, well-appointed Wetherspoons. By Blackburn market, The Sun offers TV sport, pool and darts. A short taxi or bus hop from Blackburn, the Clog & Billycock at Pleasington is known for its food. A roaring fire in winter and leafy garden terrace in summer bring many out to this rural idyll. Up in the picturesque village of Mellor Brook, connected by bus to Blackburn, the Feildens Arms has its own distinctive take on rural, with TV sport, a great selection of ales and home-made pies. On-site, en-suite rooms can reserved, too.

Where to stay

The best hotels for the ground and around town

Previous Next Visit Blackburn has database options of the limited local accommodation in town and surrounding area. A couple of hundred yards from Ewood Park, Fernhurst Lodge is ideal for that overnight away visit, particularly given the dearth of local hotels. Its large pub is used pre-match, these days by home fans only. The Fernhurst is also family-friendly, with a children’s playground, child-care service and restaurant. A Premier Inn stands 40 yards from Blackburn station on the town’s grandly named and re-imagined Boulevard. Besides a couple of desultory guesthouses in town, other accommodation options are either just the other side of Ewood Park towards Darwen or north to Mellor. Most conveniently for away fans coming by car, there are a couple of chain lodgings by the M65 Darwen motorway service area, about a mile’s walk from the stadium. These include another Premier Inn, with a Brewer’s Fayre pub, the Oakenhurst Farm, attached, and, slightly further from Ewood Park, the Travelodge Blackburn M65.

Teams, tales and tips – a guide to the local game

Concrete cows, grid planning, roundabout hell – the London overspill New Town of Milton Keynes was a hard sell even before a moneyed music producer-cum-property developer moved a 114-year-old football club 60 miles here in 2003. It wasn’t so much Pete Winkelman’s game plan – ‘naïve’, in his own words – as the principle. US sports franchises are bought and sold at will, moving American football teams from St Louis to LA at the drop of a helmet. But in the English game, tradition and local pride are sacrosanct, surely? Shouldn’t Wimbledon, 1988 FA Cup winners, play in Wimbledon? No, said Winkelman and his consortium, who brought the ailing Wimbledon FC to Milton Keynes. And, more than a decade on, with MK Dons, successors to Wimbledon FC, and breakaway club AFC Wimbledon both often found in the third flight, it has all worked out pretty well. There’s enough grudge left that even the occasional cup tie – such in 2012, decided on stoppage-time back-heel for MK – still rankles.

In the promotion season of 2014-15, MK Dons attracted an average crowd of 9,500, while nearly 21,000 witnessed the decisive fixture of 2018-19, which took the club back to League One from League Two. And all this in a contemporary, multi-sport stadium used for the Rugby World Cup of 2015 and proposed for football’s big global bash of 2018. Milton Keynes can be seen as a more than modest success story. In fact, given the accomplishments of the MK Dons youth academy – embodied by locally born Dele Alli of Tottenham and England fame – the future looks bright. And, still at the helm, is Winkelman, whose achievements made him the fourth recipient of the Freedom of the Borough – right up there with jazz singer Cleo Laine and the Infiniti Red Bull racing team, also based in Milton Keynes. It was Winkelman, after all, who personally took on the huge costs of running a football club in limbo when Wimbledon FC went into administration in 2003.

Wimbledon had enjoyed a special status in the English game. Formed in 1889, by ex-pupils of Old Central School, right on Wimbledon Common, home of eco-friendly children’s characters the Wombles, the Dons were a leading but little-known amateur side. Until 1974-75. At the height of Womblemania, with the spin-off pop band the UK’s most successful chart act, non-league Wimbledon performed near miracles to beat Burnley and hold the mighty Leeds to a 0-0 draw in the FA Cup. A nation willed the Dons to beat Leeds in the home replay, heartbreakingly decided on a deflected own goal. Hero of the day was bearded keeper Dickie Guy. Fast forward 13 years and Wembley penalty heroics from another Wimbledon keeper, Dave Beasant, against league champions Liverpool, sent the FA Cup to dilapidated Plough Lane. Manager of the so-called Crazy Gang was former Dons player Dave Bassett – whose knee had deflected Leeds their winner in 1975. In between, the Dons had entered the Football League, achieved in those days by lobbying and invitation. Soon after, chairman Ron Noades briefly investigated the possibility of moving the club to Milton Keynes. By 2001, Wimbledon were broke and had been groundsharing Selhurst Park with Crystal Palace for ten years.

Welcome to Milton Keynes/Krisztián Mányi

At the same time, celebrity resident Pete Winkelman had gained the secret backing of two large retail firms keen to open in burgeoning Milton Keynes. Long part of the plans for the New Town was a top-level football stadium. Winkelman’s team had the site – in Denbigh, halfway between the centuries-old communities of Fenny Stratford and Bletchley, of Enigma fame. The stadium would centrepiece a business park part-funded by the retail giants. In 1974, non-league Bletchley Town had become Milton Keynes City, who folded a decade later. In 1998, a Mercedes-Benz works team also became Milton Keynes City, who folded in the chaos of 2003. With a stadium already planned, and with no local side to speak of, Milton Keynes now needed a football team. Winkelman provided one: second-flight Wimbledon FC. Still based at Selhurst Park as 2003-04 began, the Dons soon moved to the Milton Keynes National Hockey Stadium, whose rapid conversion was funded by Winkelman’s consortium. In 2004, Winkelman renamed the club the Milton Keynes (MK) Dons.

Holiday Inn Milton Keynes/Peterjon Cresswell

At the same time, breakaway club AFC Wimbledon, formed by disgruntled fans of the old club in 2002, were on a record, 78-game winning streak, the start of a journey from the very lowest rungs that would lead to full league status in 2011. Over in Milton Keynes, the sleek new Stadium MK, of ambitious 30,500 capacity, was unveiled by the Queen in 2007. Built by Winkelman’s Inter MK Group, in its first season it saw the Dons rise back to League One – and even play a season in the Championship in 2015-16. The stadium confirmed its status as a major venue within easy reach of London and the Midlands by hosting four games of the Women's Euros in 2022, nearly filling to its 30,000 capacity for the Germany-France semi-final. As for AFC, theirs is a well-deserved fairytale story. Based at Kingsmeadow, 4,850-capacity ground of Kingstonian in Norbiton, near Kingston, from 2002, the Dons developed a 11,000-capacity stadium on the site of Wimbledon’s forlorn and forgotten greyhound stadium. Opened in 2020, the new Plough Lane is named in honour of the original club’s old ground, now a housing development. Venerable Kingstonian, meanwhile, were kicked out of Kingsmeadow in the spring of 2017. After a season-long groundshare deal with Leatherhead ended in 2018, the rootless K's moved to Tolworth. If ever there were victims in this whole saga, it's this amateur club dating back to 1885. Wearing Wimbledon blue, AFC gained promotion to League One where, in 2016-17, they met MK Dons as league equals for the first time. But not the last. [mapsmarker layer="196"]