Blackburn Rovers

Quick, name all seven teams that have ever won the Premier League since it was founded in 1992. The top five are easy: Man City, Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal. If you’ve been paying attention lately, you might come up with Leicester City. The other one? Blackburn Rovers, 1994-95. It really happened. Your author sat next to somebody who saw it in person.

Of course, their history didn’t start in 1994. It started more than a hundred years before, when they were founder members of the Football League. They already had three FA Cups, which they had won in consecutive seasons. They got two more by the end of the century, won the league twice before 1920, got another Cup in 1928, and then vanished from trophy world for almost 70 years.

They stayed in the top division until 1936, and after another relegation in 1948, one of the weirder traditions in all of English soccer got started. A grocer (which Brits call a greengrocer) in the nearby town of Bamber Bridge marked the occasion of Rovers’ relegation by filling a coffin with vegetables (which they just call veg) and burying it. When they went back up, he dug it up again. To this day, when Rovers go up or down, so does the coffin in Bamber Bridge–though now with a dummy wearing the club uniform, instead of veg. This is accompanied by a party-atmosphere funeral parade with costumes, speeches, and everything. Preston North End FC, just a few miles away, have started a version of it as well.

After another coffin burial in 1966, Rovers were out of the top flight for 26 years, but they were saved by a lifelong fan, Jack Walker, who had made millions in steel and bought his favorite club in 1991. He twice broke the national price record for buying players, dropped £20 million on a stadium rebuild, and put up a new training ground and academy. He hired Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish as manager, and in 1992 Rovers made the top flight again, this time into the newly formed Premier League.

They won it in 1995, with Alan Shearer banging in the goals, but he was sold to Newcastle in 1996. Rovers went back to being somewhat ordinary. They won the League Cup in 2002 and spent the next 10 years in the Premier League. When new owners came along so did two more relegations, and in 2017 they found themselves in League One. They finished second, though, so in 2018 they dug up the coffin again and got started in the Championship.

Two of the last three seasons they finished one spot out of the playoffs.

2024–25 SEASON: 7th in the Championship, 4th Round FA Cup, 2nd Round League Cup

2025-26 SEASON: The Championship (promoted in 2018)

Their biggest rival is Burnley, with whom they share the East Lancashire derby. The towns are only 11 miles apart, but with Burnley’s promotion last year, this one is on pause. Preston North End, just 30 miles away, is also disliked, as are pretty much any of the clubs around Lancashire, which is a nest of footballing antipathy.

Blackburn Rovers LFC play in the Women’s Super League 2 at tier 2. Home games are also at Ewood Park.

Their anthem is a rocking adaptation of an Irish folk song called “Wild Rover.” In the original the singer says he’ll never “play the wild rover” no more. But at Blackburn the lyrics start out:

I’ve been a wild rover for many a year

And spent all my money on this seat right here.

And the famous chorus is adapted as:

And it’s no, nay, never

No, nay never no more!

’Cause I’ll stay a wild rover

Forever and more.

They have played at Ewood Park since 1890, though of course the stadium structure is nowhere near original. Three of the stands were built in the 1990s, and total capacity is 31,367. There is a river behind the oldest and smallest stand (hence their Riversiders nickname), a memorial garden in which you must ask permission before spreading any ashes, and a statue outside of former owner Jack Taylor, identified as “Rovers Greatest Supporter.”

Away fans will be in the Darwen End, with home rowdies in the opposite Blackburn End. The main stand is the Jack Taylor. You might want to sit in the Riverside Stand for the old-fashioned feel and a good view of the rest of the place.

TOURS: Tours are offered a few times a month for £12; contact the club for details.

GETTING THERE: It’s almost two miles from the station to the ground; you can take bus 1 bound for Darwen across from the station, and it stops right by the stadium. You can also take a local train to Mill Hill and walk about 15 minutes from there.

PUBS: The two closest are the Fox and Hounds, which looks a tiny local pub, and the Fernhurst, more modern and with outdoor seating; it seems to have become the away-fans pub. Better options are in town near the station. There’s a large Wetherspoon pub called the Postal Order nearby, and around the other side of a big mall is a historic street where you’ll find the Drummer’s Arms.

GRUB: More than one English person, when they heard we were headed for Blackburn, said there are good curries there. This is because the town has one of England’s highest ratios, 30 percent, of South Asians in its population. We did find an outstanding Indian meal on the way to the ground at a restaurant called Thira, right across from the Postal Order. There is also what looks a proper sit-down chippy called the Queen Vic near Corporation Park. 

AROUND TOWN: Blackburn, Lancashire: if that town name sounds familiar to you, it’s because John Lennon sang about the 4,000 holes there. And that, in turn, is because he read a newspaper article (“I read the news today, oh boy”) about 4,000 potholes in Blackburn’s streets. So there you go.

Blackburn is the kind of town where if you look on TripAdvisor for the Top 10 Things to Do, you see a park, a museum, a living farm, another park, a historic home with gardens, an art gallery, a shopping mall, and probably another park. It is also the town that inspired our Standard Northern English Town Story.

However, every place is worth a walkabout before the game. Blackburn’s cathedral is right outside the station, as is a big statue of Queen Victoria. There’s a nice coffee shop inside the cathedral shop. The historic district includes the nice Corporation Park, the Town Hall and other 19th-century buildings. The Lewis Textile Museum has displays about the town’s cotton-making past (a mile of cloth every 20 seconds from over 100,000 looms) and the art museum is known for its collection of Japanese prints.