Blackburn Olympic FC (England)
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.
.
Blackburn Olympic were a football club that
originated in Blackburn between 1878 and 1889. They weren’t a club that were
around for long but were quite significant in the history of English Football
also. Formed out of a Blackburn pub known as ‘Hole I'-th’-wall’ pub, by a group
of regulars who socialised in the pub. When they were formed, they generally
only took part in minor competitions in and around Blackburn. They are also
known as the 1st team from Northern England and the 1st working class team to
win the FA Cup and are largely credited with turning the game of football in
England from a pastime for the upper class, to making it a professional sport.
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.
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
other’s 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.