Two founder Football League members will reconvene. Making the quarter-finals will recall an era where both regularly went deep in the competition. Each club’s home is a tribute to such a mid-20th century heyday. For the Sir Tom Finney Stand at Deepdale, read the Jimmy McIlroy Stand at Turf Moor.
Preston, last in the top division in 1961, were FA Cup runners-up in 1954 and 1964, and quarter‑finalists twice more in that period, while Burnley, Football League champions in 1960, reached the semis in 1961 and lost the 1962 final. This was a last hurrah of the provincial town club – Preston became a city only in 2002 – as the lifting of footballers’ maximum wage in 1961 began a drift towards Lancashire’s metropolitan areas of Liverpool and Manchester from the mill towns.
The postwar era furthered a trend of club chairmen being local businessmen made good, the town’s tycoon given further civic status. Burnley’s chairman from 1955 was Bob Lord, notorious as one of the first men from a football boardroom to become a headline-grabber. Today’s 3pm Saturday TV blackout is an enduring Lord legacy.