THE Forbes Pre-Season Football Tournament has once again proved it is one of the biggest and best around after teams travelled from across the North West to take part.

Despite team numbers being down on last year – mainly due to it clashing with Premier League and Championship matches – more than 1,000 junior and senior players took part in the two-day event at Pleasin-gton Playing Fields.

The competition, now in its 12th year, had teams competing in eight junior age groups – from under nines to under 16s – as well as a men’s event.

Surprisingly, teams from outside of East Lancashire made up the majority of those competing.

But it was a case of quality over quantity as local teams won five of the nine age groups and finished run-ners-up in two others.

“It is quite surprising that there are more teams from outside of the area than local teams taking part,” said Colin Hargreaves, events organiser at Black-burn with Darwen Council.

“But that just demonstr-ates how popular it has become in the 12 years we have been running it.”

The Pre-Season Tourna-ment has become one of the biggest events in the Black-burn with Darwen Council calendar and organisers have tried to make it a real family affair.

The Army were present with a climbing wall and paintballing with a differ-ence – youngsters getting the chance to shoot at targets rather than each other.

And there was shooting of another kind as Blackburn Rovers in the Community held a penalty shoot-out competition, with trophies presented to the winners while they also provided two tickets for Rovers v Arsenal in the prize draw.

There was also the opportunity to try out archery.

The chief executive of Blackburn with Darwen Council Damien Talbot was present as was the Mayor, Coun Karimeh Foster.

Hargreaves added: “Unfortu-nately, we don’t have as many big events as we used to so this is probably one of the biggest we run.

“So it was nice to be able to offer the chance for the players and spectators to have a go at other events.”

On the pitch, Wilp-shire Wanderers were the big winners after winning two groups.

Wilpshire won both the under 10s and under 11s sections.

In the under 10s, the Wanderers beat AFC Clayton 2-0 before their under 11s counterparts beat Reddish North End 1-0.

There was mixed success for Mill Hill Juniors after reaching three finals but only winning one of them.

In an all-East Lancs affair, Mill Hill lost 2-1 to Athletico Knuzden in the under nines but beat Denton Youth 2-1 in the final of the under 12s section.

Hopes of a double were dashed by Princes Villa who scored the only goal of the game in the under 14s final.

Princes Villa also beat Blackburn Warriors 1-0 in the under 16s while the senior final went to spot kicks – Lion beating Ivy Hotel 5-4 on penalties after the match ended 1-1.