The Darwen side in 1879. They were the first northern side to ever challenge the supremacy of the Southern, old boy teams. They were also the first to club to sign professional players. © Cottontown

Before Burnley had even been formed, Rovers already had a fierce rivalry with a local team; Darwen. The football party of the club had been founded in 1875, the same year as Rovers, although the club itself can trace its roots back to 1870, when rugby was played rather than the round ball game. It took five years until it adapted to Football Association rules. The club played at Barley Bank, an area near the motorway turning is now and set back about a hundred metres from Bolton Road. Darwen are remembered as the first professional football club in the world. This happened in 1878 with the signing of two Scottish players, Fergie Suter (who had played for Partick Thistle and Turton) and James Love (from Partick Thistle). Although lip-service was paid to the FA by pretending that they also worked in the town, it is was an open secret that this work was not of the most strenuous kind. Indeed, it involved not even having to go to the workplace!

Darwen emerged as the first and certainly at least equally the most hostile of the rivals of Blackburn Rovers. This rivalry started in earnest with the defection of Suter to Rovers, allegedly because they offered him more money (again he was assigned a token job to try and dampen claims of professionalism). Although Suter claimed he moved to Rovers for ‘personal reasons’ it is safe to assume that he was Rovers’ first professional player. The Darwen board was incensed.

The results of this antagonism were the scenes in the friendly at Alexandra Meadows in 1880 between the two clubs. A massive crowd for the time of over 10,000 saw two teams kicking and fouling each other repeatedly. In the second half the centre-of-attraction Fergie Suter began fighting with Jack Marshall of Darwen (a future England international) which led to a pitch invasion by both sets in fans in an attempt to reproduce the fighting. The game was abandoned in scenes of chaos and the dressing rooms were ransacked. A mirror was reported as having been smashed, although I’ve no idea why this was deemed to be such an important piece of news. Maybe there was a mirror-shortage of the time, who knows?

Hostilities looked to be about to be restored when the two sides were drawn together in the Lancashire Cup. However they refused to agree a date for the match for so long that the Lancashire FA threw both teams out of the competition. Darwen were so aggrieved with the officials that they withdrew from the competition the next season as well! By then Darwen had become the first Northern team to have a decent run in the FA Cup, reaching the semi-finals in 1881.