Association football was first codified in the 1860s in the south of England and played by teams of upper-class former public school pupils and Oxbridge graduates.

[3] The name was chosen by James Edmondson, the club's first treasurer, and is believed to have been inspired by the recent excavation of Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games.

Olympic beat St. Mark's in the final to win the tournament, and, as the competition was not held again, the club retained the trophy in perpetuity.

[6] In the club's first FA Cup match, the "Light Blues" were defeated 5–4 by Sheffield,[7] and the following season the team again lost in the first round, away to Darwen.

[12] Olympic defeated the Ruabon-based team 4–1 to progress to the semi-final stage, where for the first time they faced opponents from the south of England — Old Carthusians.

[12] The Carthusians, the team for former pupils of Charterhouse School, had won the cup two years earlier and even the local newspapers in Blackburn considered them strong favourites to reach the final again.

[18] Soon afterwards, Arthur Dunn was injured and forced to leave the field, reducing the Etonians to ten men for the rest of the match.

They focussed in particular on Olympic's training excursion to Blackpool, suggesting that the players would not have been able to take so much time off work unless the club was paying them some form of wage.

[24] Ultimately no action was taken against Olympic, although punishments were imposed on other clubs, including Preston North End, who were expelled from the FA Cup.

When the draw for the semi-finals was made, Olympic were paired with Queen's Park in one match and Rovers with Notts County in the other, setting up the possibility of the two teams meeting in the final.

Aston Villa chairman William McGregor, the driving force behind the new competition, put in place a rule stating that only one club from each town or city could join, and chose Rovers, rather than Olympic, to be Blackburn's entrant.

[32][33] Some of the clubs not invited to join the League, including Olympic, formed The Combination, but this was a poorly organised competition which attracted only small crowds and collapsed before the end of the 1888–89 season.

[36] Olympic's first match took place on a pitch owned by the Blackburn Cricket Club, situated in open countryside at Higher Oozebooth.

For the first eighteen months of the club's existence, Olympic played home matches at various sites in Blackburn, including Roe Lee and Cob Wall.

[37] In 1879 the club's committee secured the lease on a pitch adjacent to the Hole-i'-th'-Wall public house, at the top of the Shear Brow hill.

[39] A grandstand was erected behind one goal in 1881,[40] but it was severely damaged in a storm in 1884 and was replaced by a more elaborate structure along one of the long sides of the playing area.

[45] When the club entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1880, competition regulations meant that all the players in the team had to wear matching colours, and a new combination of light blue shirts and white shorts was chosen.

[45] When there was a clash of colours with the opposition and Olympic were the team obliged to change, the players wore dark blue shirts and white shorts.

[47] The club's FA Cup winning team of 1883 comprised eleven players born in England, the first time an all-English XI had won the competition.

[36] A Blackburn-based team and its victory in the 1883 FA Cup final is the focus of the 2020 Netflix mini-series The English Game, although the club is only referred to as "Blackburn" and includes players who, although genuine, did not actually play for Olympic.