Arthur Blackburn’s turn-of-the-century season at The Dell was an interlude in his unsuccessful bid, spread over three spells, to become a regular first-teamer at Ewood Park.

He arrived at Southampton in good shape – strongly built, he had been a noted quarter-mile runner in Lancashire, where he had kept extra-fit by working voluntarily on the renovation of a church –

he went straight into the first team at right-back. But a tendency to be impetuous and an ankle injury combined to thwart his progress. Out of the Southern League side by November, he never regained his place. So, come the summer, he returned home. He was reunited there with his younger brother, Fred, a rising star who had just won his first England cap, but Arthur, himself, could manage only two more appearances in the Football League. He later coached in Rotterdam, Holland, before running a tobacconist’s on the outskirts of Blackburn.