Blackburn Rovers current status under Indian owners, the Venky’s, has been compared to a sinking ship. But over a hundred years ago Rovers actually did take part in raising money for people affected by the most famous sinking ship of them all.
In the early hours of April 15th 1912, during its maiden voyage to New York, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. This led to the ship sinking with the loss of over 1,500 lives, out of approximately 2,200 onboard.
Due to worldwide attention over the enormity of this disaster, efforts were made to raise money for victims of the sinking. These included England’s football authorities. They came up with an idea of bringing forward the Charity Shield fixture between our own Blackburn Rovers, who had just won their first Football League title and were professional footballers, versus Southern League Champions Queens Park Rangers, who were the top semi-professional team.
This match, which still continues to the present day, though now called the Community Shield, only started four years previous to Rovers’ first appearance. Unfortunately many of us will have attended our only other appearances back in the 1990’s, suffering defeats to Man U and Everton. But at least we were champions at the time when we last played in this curtain raiser to each new season.
Within three weeks of RMS Titanic going down, the Charity Shield was arranged to take place at Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane ground on May 4th 1912, the only time this match has been played early. Unfortunately weather proved to be particularly bad that match day, leading to a small gate of only 7,111.
Rovers were captained by Blackburn born club legend Bob Crompton. His ship didn’t go down that day, with Rovers running out winners at 2-1. Both our goals were scored by Scottish international, Wattie Aitkenhead.
Many fans today think football didn’t exist before the Premier League, including some of our own supporters. But Rovers had already won five FA Cups and were League Champions in 1912, with another title to come a couple of seasons later.
We were the best then and our Charity Shield victory was just the tip of the iceberg. Sadly those glory days seem like an eternity away. But we thought that way before. Then look what happened! There’s always something round the corner in football. Maybe our ship will come in again one day.
