HEINZ Ketchup are sponsoring two national schoolboy football competitions for the second year in a row.

The food manufacturers put their name to the prestigious 94-year-old English Schools Trophy, which is the schools version of the FA Cup, for the first time last season.

Blackburn have never reached the final of this competition and they start out this year's campaign with a tough first round tie at Manchester.

Heinz also introduced an inter-schools national competition, which attracted over 1,000 entries last season to quickly become the largest Under-14s schoolboy football competition in England organised by the English Schools' Football Association.

Local Blackburn schools will enter that competition, which starts off on a regional basis, in the first round which kicks off on Saturday, September 25. There are also a couple of individual competitions for Under-11s next season with Adidas sponsoring the Under 11s Predator Individual Schools Six-a-side competition and the Under 11s Predator Inter Association Seven-a-side competition.

The Under-12s Individual Schools Five-a-side competition is organised on a district and county basis before it goes national, continues to be supported by Wagon Wheels.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.