AFTER the little kerfuffle last month over two Blackburn football teams being barred on geographical grounds from Burnley's Hospital Cup, which, dating from 1883, is the world's oldest amateur football competition, an echo comes to Looking Back showing how long it took Blackburn to catch up with a similar contest of its own.

And it needed a little help and guidance from the Burnley sports running the Hospital Cup contest. For Pendle reader Ron Ormerod sends a copy of a the first official handbook for the Blackburn and East Lancashire Royal Infirmary Challenge Cup and Medal Competition for teams from mills and workshops, which kicked off in 1931.

The aim, like that of the venerable Burnley cup contest, was to raise money for hospital care which in the pre-NHS era was greatly dependent on voluntary contributions.

At the time, Blackburn Infirmary was feeling the pinch, for as the booklet explained, severe trade depression and unemployment had put a brake on donations.

It also revealed how successful the Burnley Hospital Cup had been down the years in raising funds from gate money at its games - to the extent that in 1928 it had handed over the record sum of £730 to the town's Victoria Hospital.

The booklet told, too, of how officials of the Burnley competition had addressed a meeting at Blackburn Infirmary and put forward suggestions for the formation of a similar contest in Blackburn.

And says Mr Ormerod, of Walter Street, Brierfield: "My father was one of those who came to talk to people in Blackburn about the Burnley Hospital Cup and helped to set up and start the competition in Blackburn."

The Infirmary Cup, as it became known for short, got a big boost with the donation by Blackburn brewing tycoon Sir John Rutherford of the magnificent trophy that the teams would compete for.

Mega-rich bachelor baronet Sir John , who had inherited his father's partnership in Shaw's brewery in Blackburn, was president of the Infirmary and a prominent public figure, having been mayor of the town in 1888 and MP for Darwen for 27 years.

He was also a sporting sort - he was one of Blackburn Rovers' first-ever players and after his retirement from the Commons was famed on the turf as the owner of a string of racehorses, including Solario which won the 1925 St Leger and 1926 Coronation Cup at Epsom.

But he was never to see his Infirmary Cup won - for he died in February, 1932, three months before it was lifted by the British Northrop side seen, above, top, in the picture lent by Mr Trevor Booth, of Little Harwood.

The first-ever winners emerged victorious ahead of the 66 other teams who entered - each of which, according to Mr Ormerod's handbook, was required to "provide one ball which shall be properly inflated and fit to play with - one for the first half and one for the second." The Northrop team beat J and S Leaver's in the final at Ewood Park.

That year, the contest raised more than £200 for Infirmary funds and said the old Blackburn Times: "If the first season is taken as any criterion, the Blackburn and East Lancashire Royal Infirmary Football Challenge Cup and Medal Competition promises to be a tremendous success and to be the means of raising considerable sums for the benefit of what has become known as 'Blackburn's temple of healing'."

It carried on the contributions until 1948 when, with the formation of the National Health Service, the Infirmary became funded from National Insurance and the competition lapsed.

But though its inspiration, the Burnley Hospital Cup, still continues to support hospital care in the town, the Infirmary Cup was revived in 1951 as the Blackburn Orphanage Cup competition to support the town's orphanage - now the present-day Blackburn Child Care Society - of which Sir John Rutherford had been a trustee. The contest has since raised more than £80,000 for the orphans.

And the cup's first-ever winners, textile machinery makers British Northrop, were to emerge as one of the 'new' competition's most successful sides. Pictured, left, with the trophy in 1952 after their 4-2 victory at the Griffin Ground over Henry Livesey's, the loom-builders were to win the cup 10 times in all.

Another cup for which Sir John Rutherford was remembered was the solid gold Coronation Cup won by Solario in 1926 - and which was sensationally stolen in October, 1932, from Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery where it was on display. As Looking Back told in January, 2000, the thief was eventually caught and jailed, but the cup was never seen again.