Around midday on Saturday, 50 or so dedicated Blackpool fans will board a bus that will take them to Blackburn. They will be decked out with flags and banners, all in the club’s distinctive bright orange.

It is a short journey — 25 miles or so, about an hour’s drive — and a big game. Both clubs are enduring difficult seasons: Blackburn Rovers are 23rd of 24 teams in the Championship, flirting with relegation to the third tier; Blackpool, a Premier League team only six years ago, is now in the middle of the pack in League Two, the bottom rung of English soccer’s league system.

Victory offers respite: a place in the fifth round of the F.A. Cup, a chance to rub shoulders with the game’s modern giants, to escape the humdrum reality of the everyday. Saturday should be a day to start a romance.

When those fans step off their bus, though, onto the tight, terraced street that flanks Ewood Park, they will do so thinking only about divorce. They will walk to the gates of the stadium, and they will stop. They will be joined by a couple of hundred more Blackpool fans, and perhaps a couple of thousand Blackburn supporters. They will not cheer on their teams. Instead, they will support their clubs by standing outside, united in defiance.