A RARE football programme for one of the few international matches played in Blackburn is expected to fetch nearly £2,000 on Wednesday.

It cost only one penny new, but 85 years later the four-page programme, produced for the England v Wales match at Ewood Park on March 3, 1924, will be sold at Graham Budd Auctions at Sotheby’s in London.

Bidders will also be vying to win one of Lancashire’s oldest and rarest football prizes, the silver runners-up medal William Eastham collected when Accrington FC were defeated by Blackburn Rovers in the Lancashire Cup Final in 1882.

The international programme, which also features a front cover advertisement for gentlemen’s outfitters John Forbes, of Victoria Street, Blackburn, marked the match in which Blackburn Rovers goalkeeper Ronnie Sewell made his first and last appearance for England – at the age of 33.

Wales beat England 2-1 in front of a 30,000 crowd boosted by Sewell’s inclusion.

The goalkeeper spent seven years with Rovers from 1920.

He was described by club historian, Mike Jackman, as a “good humoured man, a popular figure and a man who could be relied upon to lift dressing room morale”.

Sewell missed only two of Rovers’ 42 league matches in the 1923-1924 season, the year he made his England debut at Blackburn.

Alongside Ted Harper, who scored 18 league goals, Sewell was one reason Rovers did so well that season, finishing eighth in the old first division, then the top flight of English professional football.

Sewell died in Lincoln in February,1945, aged 54.

William Eastham’s Accrington FC medal is expected to reach £500.

Accrington FC, not to be confused with Accrington Stanley, who were formed later, were defeated in the Lancashire Cup Final in 1882.