[4] The club took a step forward in ambition in the 1884–85 season, plundering the Heart of Midlothian by signing up five of its players (George and Thomas Douglas, James Ferguson, James Renwick, and Jock Scotland) on professional terms,[5] tried to sign goalkeeper "Long" Bob Roberts from West Bromwich Albion,[6] and entered the FA Cup for the first time.

It also entered Lancashire Senior Cup that season and in the first round hammered Brierfield 14–0 at the Pleasure Grounds before "a fair number of spectators", ten goals coming in the second half.

motion refusing to register players with the Football Association, but declared that "if they did not do as they were doing they would be extinguished, and they may as well die with their face to the foe as with their back to them.

Zingari tried to fill the gap by filling its fixture lists, playing 4 games in 10 days in October 1884, including its second round tie Lancashire Cup tie with Blackburn Rovers (losing 2–1) and, with the strain of such a fixture list, having to send a mostly reserve side to Great Lever, where it lost 11–1.

[17] The club tried to continue by amalgamating with Preston Albion in October 1885, but after a dispiriting defeat by Haydock in the new combine's first match, it seems to have given up the ghost.