Blackburn Rovers Shirt History

Blackburn Rovers are famously seen with halved football shirts (described as “quartered” in the early days because the body was made up of four panels – Rovers kept this terminology until well into the 20th century). These were initially white paired with Oxford blue but by 1882 Cambridge blue was used, perhaps reflecting Varsity connections. Thetintof blue became darker in the Edwardian period but the light blue and white theme was revived briefly in the 1990s. The blue half could appear on the left or right side of the shirt and team pictures show players wearing both right and left-handed versions . Since 1935, when the deeper shade of mid-blue we are familiar with seems to have been adopted, the left-hand side has always been blue.

In 1882, Rovers reached the English FA Cup Final for the first time, losing 0-1 to the Old Etonians. The following season local rivals Blackburn Olympic became the first northern club to win the competition. Not to be outdone, Rovers promptly poached Olympic’s best players with illicit offers of payment and triumphed three times in succession (1884, 1885, 1886) and were awarded a special commemorative shield by the FA. When the Football League was started in 1888, Rovers were immediately invited to join. For the rest of the century, however, the club continued to regard the FA Cup as their main business and in 1890 and 1891 they again won the competition.  Throughout this whole period the Blackburn Rovers shirts were always made out in their classic blue and white design .

Team photographs of the late Victorian period often show players with a three-lions crest sewn onto their football shirts leading some to suppose that this was the club’s crest. In fact, these are FA badges which players capped for their country cut from their England shirts and had sewn onto their club shirts to distinguish them from their uncapped colleagues. This practice died out in the 1890s.