Blackburn Olympic FC
Right, Blackburn Olympic FC. How did I find them? Well sometimes out of sheer boredom, I tend to go through the history of competitions, from the World Cup to The European Championships and other international tournaments, to club tournaments like The European Cup/Champions League, the UEFA/Europa League and the European Competition I miss the most, The Cup Winners Cup. But I do have a soft spot for domestic cups, and the FA Cup still means a lot to me, my team,(Liverpool) have an ok record in it but it could be better, but if you look back at the early years of the competition, the FA Cup is generally littered with clubs that took part but ultimately cease to exist. I noticed Blackburn Olympic, a team I had never heard of before, so I dug a little deeper and got very interested in them and how they came to form as a club and ultimately how they folded. I really enjoyed what I found and tried in the best way I could to tell a story of a club that I knew very little about. I hope you, enjoy reading this wherever in the world you are as much as I enjoyed writing it.
In 1880 Blackburn Olympic entered the FA Cup for the 1st time. Where they were defeated 5-4 by the oldest ever football club Sheffield F.C. in the 1st round. The next year they took on local rivals Darwen, again in the 1st round are were again beaten 3-1. the next seasons competition was the biggest one in Olympic’s history, they finally got past the 1st round beating Accrington 3-1, then they beat Lower Darwen 8-1 in the 2nd round, then Darwen Ramblers in the 3rd 8-0, I know what you’re thinking, how many teams from Darwen were there back then? I know I'm the same. I've come across 4 now already! In the 4th round, they beat another club called Church 4-0 to get through to the Quarter Finals where they beat Welsh side Druids 4-1 again at home, incidentally they were drawn at home in every round of the tournament even as the home team in the semi-finals and final. In the semi however they beat previous winners 2 seasons ago Old Carthusians 4-0 to set up a final with the defending champions Old Etonians.
Illustration of the 1883 FA Cup final
The 1883 FA Cup Final was contested at Kennington Oval Cricket ground, one of many grounds that the final would be contested in until Wembley was built in 1921. Blackburn Olympic, being a club with working class roots, were known for playing a combination play, a style of play built around passing the ball to each other rather than just getting the ball and trying to dribble your way towards the goal, kind of like what we see now, while Etonians were playing a game more familiar to public schools of rushing which is now known as long ball, where the keeper or centre halves would play long balls bypassing the midfield straight to the centre forward.
Old Etonians took the lead through Harry Goodhart but Alfred Matthews equalised not long after, the game went to extra time and was settled by a header by James Costley in the 107th minute. The game ended 2-1 and Blackburn Olympic were the FA Cup winners for the 1st time, and became the 1st working class team from the North of England to win the Cup.
The next season, they were drawn at home again to Darwen Ramblers and beat them 5-1, in the 2nd, they were drawn away to Darwen and came away with a 2-1 win, they received a bye to the 4th round of the competition where they were drawn at home to Old Wykehamists, a game which they duly won 4-1. The 5th round saw them take on Northwich Victoria and they went on to win 9-1 to set up a semi-final with Scottish Club Queens Park from Glasgow, who unfortunately beat them 4-0, which denied the club the chance to meet rivals Blackburn Rovers in the final. Rovers went on to beat Queens Park 2-1 in the final.
However with the game in England expanding and teams from other areas boasting more wealth and bigger squads, Blackburn Olympic would never reach the semis or final again.
Blackburn at the time of the 1870s had quite a few football teams dotted around the area(we already found that there were already a few from nearby Darwen) and Blackburn Rovers who were formed in 1875 the team that had a reputation for being the best team coming from that area. Blackburn Olympic came from a merger between two of the existing clubs from the area known as Black Star and James Street. The clubs 1st treasurer at the time, James Edmondson chose the name Olympic, after he was apparently inspired by the excavation of Olympia, where the Olympic Games were started.
They played their 1st match which was a friendly against St Johns also from Blackburn amd won 2-0. Since the football league hadn’t been started at this time, Olympic mostly organised friendlies or entered local cup competitions that were scheduled around the area, the 1st competition the Livesey United cup, which they won, and also got to keep as the competition was never staged again.
As they went on playing friendlies, they entered the Blackburn Association Challenge cup and won the tournament 2 years in a row in 1879 and 1880 before the Blackburn Association was absorbed into the Lancashire League, but as the competition was then discontinued, they kept the trophy forever. After they entered the FA Cup and began to do well, their reputation started to spread round England, and even up to Scotland and friendlies were arranged. Teams like Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday and teams from Scotland like Hibernian and Cowlairs came down to play them.
When Olympic won the FA Cup, the FA which is from London, didn’t exactly react to the win well. Clubs in the north were already suspected of playing their players while the FA had a ban on payment of players imposed. Before the final that they won, their manager, and ex player, ex international Jack Hunter had decided to take his squad away to Blackpool for a week for a training camp, which at the time had never been done before, was considered a novel idea, but raised suspicions of teams in the south and the FA. Players like Hunter also irked the clubs, the FA and journalists in the south as players signing for Olympic would relocate from where they were from to live in Blackburn while playing for the club. They were never punished or was a case brought against them, but local rivals and historic club Preston North End were exposed, and expelled from the cup, a move which angered the clubs in the north, who threatened to break away and form their own league up north, and make the game more professional.
When the FA decided to accept professionalism into sports and wages started to be paid, Olympic couldn’t compete with Blackburn Rovers or other teams around the area and so a decline began. When the Football League, the brainchild of then Aston Villa chairman William McGregor started the League, he put a rule in place that only one team from each City or Town could join the league, and Rovers, rather than Olympic were elected, which forced other clubs to come up with the Combination League. It however was poorly organised, and badly attended and it badly affected Olympic, who finally called it a day in 1889, and their last ever match was a defeat away to Everton.
The club played in the ‘Hole-I'-th’-wall stadium, local grounds behind the pub which the club were formed. When the club folded, the ground was taken over by St Marys cricket club, the ground is now the site of a College now.
The clubs colours were light blue shirts with white shorts, with their change strip being dark blue with white shorts.
Olympic had a fierce rivalry with Blackburn Rovers, and their first game ended in a 3-1 win for Olympic. They met 40 times in the 11 years they were in existence and only won 6 times.
The rivalry in the 1884-85 season became extremely bitter and intense as both clubs accused each other of poaching or tapping up each others players, the chairman of Rovers sent a telegram to the Olympic chainman telling him that Rovers wouldn’t play them that season. Ironically though, they were drawn in the FA Cup that season and they agreed to arrange fixtures again. The last ever game between the 2 teams was in 1889 in a benefit match for Blackburn Olympic, which Rovers won 6-1. Rovers then agreed to let Olympic keep the gate receipts as they needed the money more than rovers did. Sadly, however later that year, Blackburn Olympic eventually folded and were never heard of again.
The clubs honours were the Livesey United Cup, The FA Cup 2 Blackburn Association Cups and the East Lancashire Charity Cup. The only cup the club entered but never won, other than the combination that wasn’t finished, was the Lancashire Senior Cup.
The season the club won the FA Cup, the clubs lineup contained one England international. 6 other players who played for Olympic, became internationals, before or after they played with the club. They are also the 1st club to win the FA Cup with a team of players all born in England.
The team that day was:
Thomas Hacking(GK) James Ward, Albert Warburton, Thomas Gibson, Jack Hunter, William Astley, Thomas Dewhurst, Arthur Matthews, George Wilson, Jimmy Costley, John Yates. James Ward was the only player who became an England international while playing for Blackburn Olympic in a game against Wales in 1885.
Blackburn Olympic may not have been missed during the glory years of Blackburn Rovers, when they even won the Premier League title, but they may have been in the thoughts of the fans more recently when Rovers were in big trouble and fans were in dispute with the owners, the Venkys. Maybe the fans could have resurrected Blackburn Olympic and renewed the rivalry? Or maybe this club has been truly forgotten? Either way, they will always have a place in the history of the English game.