Originally a cricket club, Preston have been based at Deepdale since 1875. The club first took up football in 1878 as a winter fitness activity and decided to focus on it in May 1880, when the football club was officially founded. Deepdale is now football’s oldest ground in terms of continuous use by a major league club, In the 1888-89 season, the team won both the inaugural league championship and the FA Cup. They were the first team to achieve the “Double” in English football and, as they were unbeaten in all matches, are remembered as “The Invincibles”. Preston won the league championship again in 1889-90 but their only major success since then has been their 1938 FA Cup Final victory over Huddersfield Town. Historically, Preston North End’s main rivalry has been with Blackpool and the West Lancashire derby between the two clubs has been contested across all four divisions of the Football League since 1901. Preston’s other local rivals in the league over the years have included Blackburn Rovers, Burnley, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic. Like the club colours the badge similarly has had a single-minded theme, namely a paschal lamb. The club’s first official badge depicted the red roses of Lancashire and the lamb from the Borough’s coat of arms. The lamb is that of St. Wilfrid who is the Patron Saint of Preston. The letters ‘PP’ are taken to mean ‘Princeps Pacis’, ‘ Prince of Peace’ for those less acquainted with Latin. On earlier versions of the arms the lamb was standing and three letters ‘P’ were depicted on it. The reason for the three letters was quite simply to give a general balance to the arms. The arms were in later years modernised and one of the letters ‘P’ was left out, again as a method of improving the general design balance. Preston North End eventually dropped the three red roses from their crest.
