A DISTANT relative of a member of the town's first successful football team is making a heartfelt plea for the return of a medal lost more than 16 years ago.

James Ward is looking for an FA Cup Winners' medal won by his father's uncle Jimmy Thomas Ward when he played for Blackburn Olympic FC in the 1883 final.

It was handed down the Ward family and was passed to James's son Neville when he was 18.

Soon after he took it down south to Hove near Brighton when he moved with his girlfriend of the time.

Somehow his girlfriend's youngster got his hands on the medal, took it to school with him .... and never brought it back.

"It was lucky they were all down south because I would have strangled the pair of them if they had walked through the door," said James, of Bridge Road, in Chatburn near Clitheroe.

"My dad died in 1973 but he would have gone absolutely ballistic.

"It was passed down to my dad when he came of age at 21 and he gave it to me when I was 21 and Neville got it when he was 18."

An FA Cup medal won by Blackburn Rovers' star Fergie Suter in 1885 is to be put up at auction later this month at Christie's in London, valued at around £6,000 but James Ward said it's not about the money.

"I don't want it back because I think it might be valuable but it was a family heirloom," said James.

"Somebody must know what happened to it and have it somewhere." Jimmy Ward played left-back for Blackburn Olympic and helped them win the FA Cup a year before their now more famous neighbours and intense rivals Blackburn Rovers. As a lad of 15 Jimmy, who lived in Harwood Street, in Blackburn, would watch the Olympics play and dream of one day joining them.

His dreams were answered soon after and greatly surpassed when, at 18 years and three days old, he became the youngest player ever to win an FA Cup medal -- and to this day is one of the youngest.

Olympic beat the Old Etonians 2-1 and brought the famous cup to Blackburn -- the first time it had ever ventured out of London.

For his part in that historic victory Jimmy, a cotton machine operator, received a winner's medal which became a Ward family heirloom. Jack Walker once offered to buy it for the Rovers museum but was turned down by James because he thought it would stay in the family for a long time to come.

But all that changed when Neville Ward got his hands on it.