On the face of it, Preston North End versus Burnley seems like a bog-standard Championship fixture.

Since the start of the 21st century, the clubs have met 26 times in the second tier of English football, making it one of the division’s most regular encounters.

Such a sense of routine was supported by the outcomes in two league fixtures this season, with meetings at Turf Moor in October and Deepdale earlier this month finishing in goalless draws.

The BBC wrote of “a typically frantic and feisty Lancashire derby” in February — that game has subsequently led to an investigation by the Football Association following claims of an alleged racist comment by the Preston forward Milutin Osmajic (Osmajic “strongly refuted” the claims, Preston said) — but it was otherwise only notable because the visiting team extended their remarkable record of consecutive clean sheets to 11.

They meet again at the same venue this weekend, only something is unusual about the tie because it is the first time the rivals have met in the FA Cup, the oldest cup competition in the world.

What makes that especially strange is the fact Preston and Burnley have met on 141 occasions since becoming two of the founding members of the Football League, playing each other on the opening weekend of a newly-launched competition on September 8, 1888.

To put that in a broader historical context, Preston and Burnley is a story nearly as old as Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of one of the most famous political dynasties in the history of the United States, who was born two days before one of the most seismic moments in English football.

Preston versus Burnley is, however, older than the public elevator in the Washington Monument, which was opened for the first time in October 1888.

Amid these events, the British media was consumed by a series of murders in the east end of London. Nineteen days after Preston blew Burnley away at Deepdale, a letter in red ink which began with “Dear Boss” was delivered to the capital’s Central News Agency, allegedly by the perpetrator of the crimes. Its sign-off led to the birth of Jack the Ripper, whose identity has never been discovered.

Preston versus Burnley is even older than some of football’s principal rules. It was only in November 1888 that a points system was devised by the game’s authorities, with two for a win and one for a draw. Two months before that, Preston’s five goals to Burnley’s two did not appear to matter that much because positions were merely calculated “from wins, draws, and losses”.

On the same day Preston hosted Burnley for the first time, Merseyside had not been created. Liverpool was instead in Lancashire, a county Accrington crossed to meet Everton at Anfield. Within three years, a rent dispute sent them to Goodison Park and Liverpool FC was formed.

Sixty miles south of Preston, Stoke’s defeat at home by West Bromwich Albion would be the first of 152 meetings to date. Of the founding members, these clubs are more familiar with one another, yet Preston versus Burnley should surely be considered the ultimate heritage fixture.

Our picture archives do not stretch back to the 1880s, but this image shows Preston scoring a penalty against Burnley in 1953 (Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

While geography matters (Preston is 21 miles from Burnley and Stoke is 39 miles from West Bromwich), it is surely the turbulence of history that matters most: after Preston marked the inaugural season by going the whole year unbeaten, earning them the tag of “Invincibles”, both clubs have subsequently enriched English football’s four levels, winning titles in each (though Portsmouth, Sheffield United and Wolverhampton Wanderers share the same record, they entered the pyramid at later dates and little else connects them).

While Preston considers Blackpool its primary regional rival and Blackburn takes that role for Burnley, these derbies are less common than Preston and Burnley, who have played each other 50 times in the second tier and 60 in the first. Yet it has more recently been a fourth-tier fixture — both clubs tumbled out of the third tier in 1985 and Preston were the first to heave themselves back two seasons later.

In the space of 24 years, Preston and Burnley went from being a top-flight fixture to a bottom-tier one. In September 1960, Burnley completed a league double over Preston, who were relegated at the end of the campaign and have never returned, a theme explored recently in this article about Deepdale’s history by The Athletic’s Daniel Taylor.

For the time being, Burnley seem to be the more upwardly-mobile club, having had three spells in the Premier League this century (the longest between 2016 and 2022), while Preston have remained in the Championship for all but a single campaign (when they were relegated to League One in 2011).

“I suppose we do to some degree,” says Paul Vincent, a season-ticket holder at Deepdale, when he is asked whether Preston supporters look across with jealousy at what has happened at Turf Moor, a venue which has witnessed promotions to the top flight as recently as 2023. “But they need to remember, Preston is historically a more significant club.”

Except, that is difficult to measure. Preston and Burnley both have two top-flight titles (Burnley’s is more recent), and it could be argued that both of Preston’s were easier to win given the last of those was in 1890 when there were just 12 teams in the league.

Burnley finished those campaigns fourth from bottom and second to bottom, only retaining their status through reelection. Preston also have two FA Cups to Burnley’s one but what Vincent is really digging at is the presence of Tom Finney in Preston’s history, one of English football’s greatest players and goalscorers.

While some historians with a deeper understanding of each club’s past credit Preston with being pioneers in lots of different ways, scandal is linked to their success. The team’s manager and secretary in the late 1880s, William Sudell, was a local accountant and mill owner. “His approach to recruitment, tactics and team selection was the major factor in Preston’s early success,” wrote John Williams in his book about the making of the British game, Football in the Wind and Rain.

The league’s top scorer in that first season, for example, was John Goodall, a forward who signed for Preston when he seemed destined for Bolton Wanderers. Instead, Suddell hatched a plan to bundle him into a taxi, which sent him to the nearest station, arriving at Preston via Blackburn.

Sudell was a determined figure who used chess pieces on snooker tables to try to explain his complex game plans. Yet he also secretly provided new signings, particularly those relocating from Scotland, with minor but well-paid jobs in his mill. This was before professionalism had been officially sanctioned. Williams suggests rival club directors “often asked how he, and Preston, a modest north-west town, could possibly afford the salaries of so many Scottish imports”.

After resigning in 1892, Preston were relegated in 1894. A year later, Sudell was convicted of embezzling thousands of pounds from his mill, funding Preston’s lavish wages and expenses. “It was one of English football’s original financial scandals,” wrote Williams. The fraud of nearly half a million pounds in today’s money resulted in a three-year prison sentence for Sudell.

Burnley have more recently been champions of England (in 1960 — Preston finished ninth that season before relegation in 1960-61, their last appearance in the top flight) but that achievement would probably not have been possible without the investment of a local butcher turned chairman, Bob Lord. Another controversial figure who banned official supporters’ groups because he thought they would want to seize his power, as well as journalists who challenged him, Lord still has a stand named after him at Turf Moor despite making anti-semitic comments in 1974 when he was still running the club.

The presence of figures like Sudell and Lord remind us that if Preston versus Burnley is the ultimate heritage fixture, it is not necessarily the most innocent one.

(Top photo: Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)