Rovers fans travel along Wembley Way. It was their first appearance at the home of English football for 27 years and that had hardly been the happiest of games. In fact, Rovers had to go back fifty nine years for their last victory underneath the famous towers. © Cottontown

Cup Final Day at Wembley in 1987. Alright, it was only the Full Members Cup yet it was to prove the high point of the life in the eighties as a Rovers fan. © Cottontown

The best thing about being a Rovers fan in the 1980s was that even though there seemed to be at times little hope, events often conspired to shock and exhilarate the long-suffering supporters. Who would have expected an Argentine World Cup winner such as Ossie Ardiles to pop along for a while seemingly out of the blue and join the already present star of the side, Barcelona striker Steve Archibald? Who would have expected Rovers to (very, very briefly) take part in the centenary celebrations for the Football League as participants at Wembley? Who would have expected battling performances against the likes of Southampton, Liverpool, Everton and Aston Villa in the cups? More importantly, who on earth would have expected a first Wembley cup win in six decades?

The Full Members’ Cup may not have been taken seriously by all clubs (including Rovers themselves as they did not even bother to enter the competition in its first season) but it provided a welcome relief from the grind and monotony of life in the old Second Division and enabled Rovers to win only their second ever game at the home of English football, Wembley Stadium.

The competition was based on the usual cup format of a series of knockout rounds until the final, which was played at the neutral ground of Wembley. All previous rounds were played at the home ground of the side that had been drawn first. The competition was introduced after the ban of English clubs from European competition and was restricted to solely the full members of the league, i.e. those teams in the top two divisions. Those teams in the third and fourth divisions were deemed as being associate members and had their own, separate competition. Despite the absence of European football, only 21 of the 44 ‘Full Members’ chose to enter the competition in its first year. A season later, after Chelsea won the inaugural competition 5-4 in a thriller against Manchester City, every Second Division side and most First Division sides entered, albeit often playing weakened teams.

For once and in what was totally contradictory to Rovers’ usually useless performances in modern cup competitions, they revelled in this new challenge. After a less than impressive 2-1 win after extra time away at Huddersfield Town in the first round and a similarly less than thrilling 1-0 home win over Sheffield United at Ewood in the second, Rovers suddenly burst into life. The fans didn’t respond quite so quickly however. Home wins over two first division sides, Oxford United (4-3) and even more impressively Chelsea who were promptly thrashed despite them being the then holders of the cup. This took Rovers to a cup semi-final, much to the astonishment and bemusement of the locals who suddenly had to catch up and embrace an utterly unanticipated prospect of a place at Wembley (they Chelsea score was 3-0). Less than three thousand had turned up for the win over Oxford and there hadn’t been that much of an improvement against Chelsea. With the chance of a first Wembley appearance for twenty-seven years in the air, 12,060 fans packed into Ewood to see Rovers demolish Ipswich 3-0. No mean feat, as Ipswich reached the play-offs that season. Not that anyone cared about them though…Rovers were off to Wembley!!!