BLACKBURN Rovers’ walking football team won four games out of four to qualify for the Lancashire Summer Series Grand Final in October.

After two near misses in the previous two rounds of the five-afternoon competition, it was third time lucky for the blue and whites, who won a crucial deciding fixture against their hosts, Fleetwood Town Flyers.

With both teams heading into the final game with 100 per cent records, Rovers’ growing tournament experience showed in a tense 1-0 victory, to add to their earlier wins over AFC Fylde, Carlisle United and Blackpool.

It now means that Billy Legg’s team will be joining Blackpool and Wigan Athletic - winners of the previous two rounds of the competition - in the the end of season grand finals, with two more rounds to play in August and September to determine the remaining finalists.

The fledgling competition was the brainchild of Fleetwood Town Community Trust, who host every round of fixtures at their fantastic new training ground at Poolfoot Farm in Thornton. The invite-only affair is played between the north west’s foremost walking football sides, with the winners of each round of fixtures making it through to the end of season finals, or the next highest placed team that hasn’t already qualified, in the event of a side winning a qualifying round more than once.

The latest success is a remarkable achievement for a Rovers side which only played its first friendly in late February when they lost 6-2 at home to Fleetwood. Since then, they have finished as regional runners up in an EFL Trust competition, semi finalists in a friendly competition at FC United and have made it through to the northern regional finals of the WFU National Tournament - the walking football equivalent of the FA Cup.

Rovers take on the ‘best of the rest’ from the north on a round-robin basis at the Blackburn Rovers Indoor Centre on Nuttall Street on Sunday, August 28 from 2pm to 5pm for the right to try and reach the national finals.