The Longside Reference

NOW THE LONGSIDE’S GONE

    It was my dad who first took me to Turf Moor in 1955. I was unimpressed even though it was a game against Manchester United. There’s still a hazy memory of a 0 – 0 game and something lingers in the back of my head that Man U played in blue for some reason or other and I was disappointed they weren’t in red. My dad was quietly and undemonstratively fanatical, if that’s not a contradiction, oxymoron is the fancy word I do believe, and in later years when I did eventually become addicted myself, he’d go through some of the goals he’d seen scored at the Turf, one being Tommy Cummings’ ‘best goal ever’ as it is fondly known, in January 52, when he went the length of the pitch against Newcastle and scored a stunner beating every Newcastle player on the way. Cloth caps were the norm then, and one can only assume that when 33,000 cloth caps were hurled up in the air when the ball hit the back of the net, a lot of blokes went back home that day with the wrong cap on.

          What has certainly stuck in my mind about that day in ‘55 when I first went to see a game was that we stood on the Longside and we were somewhere near the front. That was his spot, on the Longside, roundabout the halfway line and then when regular visits began in 59/60 it was always the same place and you had to pay a bit extra for the privilege of being in the enclosure. Little lads had little stools to stand on carried in for them by considerate dads. Can you imagine that happening today? You wouldn’t get it past the first steward.

     After every game there was a Sunday morning ritual. Ever fearful that his son and heir wasn’t reading enough, he’d have me read out loud to him the Burnley report from the Sunday paper, the Express it always was, and it was always a substantial lengthy report, because we always won, or so it nostalgically seems. And thus I learned to read quite happily, and for extra practice I perused the Saturday night Sports Pink as well. I’d race down town to buy one as soon as the lad who sold them turned up underneath the Todmorden railway viaduct near the market place.  There’s a message there for all the educators of this world today that if you want young lads to read with gusto and enthusiasm, just stick the back page of the Sunday paper in front of them or an old Sports Pink and never mind about National Curriculum and SATS. They won’t be necessary.

     1959/60. Not a bad season to start being a regular supporter was it? And of the games that season, two are still locked in my head, one of them was an 8 – 0 win over Nottingham Forest and the second was a 2 – 0 win over Tottenham. The goals from that game I have never forgotten, a bullet header by Ray Pointer from a cross whipped over by John Connelly and the second scored by Connelly himself when he cut in and let fly with a 20 yard rocket. In those days the din was incredible, the roof of the stand acting as a lid on a soundbox, and with those old fashioned wooden rattles that we all had, it was just thunderous. And the pleasure of sending the Tottenham aristocrats back down to the namby pamby south, beaten, was just wonderful

     The ritual afterwards was always the same if it was a night game, there was a pub somewhere up on the moors and for the life of me I can’t think of the name but you turned right off the Todmorden to Bacup Road and drove along some god forsaken winding narrow lane until you reached this place in the wilderness where you met all the blokes who came from Tod and had been at the game standing near us and you relived the game all over again whilst demolishing a plate of pie and peas, or two. ‘Course in those days in the 60s there was something to talk about, because we usually won, including European games on foggy nights when Johnny Foreigner was sent back with his tail between his legs having discovered what unfashionable Burnley was all about and that John Angus and Andy Lochhead were not blokes to be lightly trifled with. 

     Funny how it’s evening games that seem the most vivid. The story goes that Bob Lord ordered the floodlights to be switched on early so that blokes on their way home from work would know there was a game on. Evening games always seemed to be misty which added to the drama. If it was a wet pitch the lights would make it sparkle and glisten unless of course it was that time of year when the mud was six inches deep and Brian O’ Neil took to it like a duck to water. Was it mist or was it the steamy breathe and cigarette smoke drifting out from under the Longside canopy like a thick fog? Whatever it was, the atmosphere was inimitable, and the noise just awesome.

   I’m lucky. I never saw the Longside forlorn and dilapidated in the sad desperate years when crowds were down to a mere handful, the empty spaces were embarrassing, you could have a metal barrier to yourself, the football was dire and we even lost to teams like Rochdale and Hereford. God knows how Bob Lord must have felt as he looked across from his comfy seat in his stand and on the Longside opposite saw the lack of spectators and desperately needed income. He must have known the game was up; his day was done, and that the great club and tradition that he had created was vanishing and crumbling before his eyes: From games against Hamburg and Napoli to games against Shrewsbury and Newport: From riches to rags, from delight to dross.

     For me it became difficult to get to Turf Moor after the lovely side that Adamson created faded into nothing because one by one the best players were sold. But I do remember that in the 70s the Longside was responsible for the reawakening of old friendships when a bunch of people I knew from college days appeared behind us. We still meet them today and now all of us are growing old together. By then though I was married and prior to that marriage, part of the courtship ritual included taking the bride to be on the Longside to see the team of the mid 60s. And then once married it was the team of the late 60s, then the early 70s, and always standing in the same spot, seeing the same people and hearing the Carpenters over the tannoy in that gorgeous 73/74 season following promotion when the football was superb and we all thought Adamson really had created the team of the seventies. That was the season that the Longside destroyed Alan Ball to the point where eventually he couldn’t kick a ball in a straight line or make a 2-yard pass and Burnley won 2 – 1 (Waldron and Hankin). The derision hurled at him was incessant, the abuse was appalling, much of it from Mrs T. who used words that day that she didn’t understand and has never used since. She still blushes when I mention it. You almost felt sorry for Ball that day he was in such a dithering state and it just illustrated the power and effect of so many people all crammed in one space yelling fury and vitriol at this previously cocky arrogant little sod. Funnily enough, years earlier, as a young lad stood standing with my dad I’d hurled similar abuse at a Sheffield Wednesday player called Tony Kay when he’d upended a Burnley player for the umpteenth time in the game. Pater, whose character was largely Victorian even in the 1960’s, was not best pleased.
    
Only on the brightest, warmest, sunniest day did we venture out onto the Beehole End from the womb-like closeness of the Longside when on big game days you were squashed in like sardines in a tin. Such a squashed-in day was versus Liverpool in their pomp one year and we could only squeeze in right at the very back in the corner nearest the cricket field end and we weren’t quite under the cover. Behind us was a high brick wall upon which sat Liverpool supporters revelling in a game where they hammered us 4 – 0. The next season they trounced us 5 – 1 on Boxing Day. Sometimes the Longside was not a happy place to be. It certainly wasn’t when Wimbledon a then non-league side came and won 1 – 0 in a cup game. But the sun shone brightly on the day the Burnley babes beat Revie’s Leeds 5 – 1 and that day we were out on the Beehole End not just loving the humiliation of Leeds but also in awe of the sound of a 26,000 crowd of whom probably 10,000 were on the Longside.

        People who are old enough to have stood on the Longside in the 60s and 70s are so privileged. Not just to have stood there but also to have been able to see the procession of great players and names that came our way. Not only had we our own great players, Jimmy Mac, Adamson, Pointer, Connelly, O’ Neil, Irvine, Lochhead, Coates, Morgan, Thomas, Dobson, Stevenson, Noble, Kindon, Waldron, James, Flynn, and all the rest (put them all down and we’d fill the page) but there were also the visitors as well – St John, Greaves, Mackay, Blanchflower, Ball, Osgood, Best, Charlton, Law, Banks, Hunter, Bremner, Bell, Summerbee et al. An endless list of great, great players and on the days when you beat them, and we were just modest Burnley, a little team amongst the city giants it was just such a marvellous feeling.

     I wasn’t there when Burnley beat Celtic 1 – 0 in the Anglo Scottish Cup by which time the Longside was divided in two by railings and fencing, one half being for the away supporters. On that shameful night the rioting by Celtic fans, the stopping of the game, the fencing used as spears, the bottles used as missiles, the bloodied heads and overwhelmed policemen became national TV news. The story goes that as the players sat huddled in the dressing room waiting for the crowd to settle and order to be restored, Harry Potts suggested to Steve Kindon that he should go out and appeal for calm. “Er just one small problem boss,” he allegedly replied, “it was me that scored the goal that started it.”

     Of course the good years couldn’t last and the demise of the Longside and the gradual dwindling of its regulars, mirrored in many ways the decline of the club itself through the eighties, until at last it came to the final game of that awful season when the club was about to implode until it scraped a 2 – 1 win against Leyton Orient and saved itself. The club wouldn’t have folded though. I’ve since learned that there were people ready to step in and provide the finance to keep the club in business had it lost that day. But that was the day that the Longside was a twelfth man as an endless volume of emotion, fervour, support and desperation cascaded down from the terraces onto the field for the whole of the game. It transformed limited players into winning ones that day. It infused them with a passion that lifted them, our will to win became their will to win and it’s doubtful that a crowd will ever again lift and carry a team in the way it did that day. And if that was not memorable enough there was the coming together after the game of two sets of supporters as Orient fans shared our contagious joy, exchanging scarves, handshakes, smiles and genuine love, for they too knew that what they had witnessed might not have been the greatest ever game, but it was a truly great sporting occasion, one of football’s happy endings and all of us had been part of it. That was one of the handful of games in the 80s I did attend as if some kind of maternal umbilical cord was still intact and drew me back in that hour of need.

     Believe it or not my first sight of the new stands was a total surprise. Much of the 90s was still a time when I never set foot anywhere near the Turf – family reasons mainly and being tied down in Leeds. And then one day we had a journey back to Leeds to make via Burnley and we decided to make a detour by the ground for old times’ sake. We looked in amazement at these two new towering blocks. I was actually numbed with shock it was so totally unexpected. The Bee Hole End and more significantly the Longside where I had grown up were gone. The car as good as stopped its self; my mouth dropped open.         

     The memories remain though in scrapbooks and albums of cuttings, on websites like Stuart Clarke’s Homes Of Football, in books and on video or old Match Of The Day recordings of games long gone. But it’s in the mind where they live on most vividly.

     The deep carpets, lines of well-drilled waiters and fine dining of the cosseted James Hargreaves hospitality area might be OK for some and for the commercial coffers, and the outside areas might have their superb clear views, but it just isn’t the same as standing outdoors on the old Longside in the cold air, shoulder to shoulder with people you don’t know from Adam, but whom for 90 minutes are your comrades and brothers, and with whom you chant, sing and sway in unison. Something died when all seater stadiums became the norm.

      It occurs to me that 2005 is a double anniversary for me. Not only is it just ten years since the Longside was demolished, but it is 50 years since I first stood there and if football can be defined as a place to be, the old Longside was in reality that place, and in my mind, 50 years later, it still is.

 

My first full game was a Chesterfield when Burnley needed a point to secure the 3rd division, and i stood on the Bee Hole End, I was eleven at the time, and i can remember looking over to the Longside, the Noise, the ferocity of its roar, the movement, the fun. The following season my dad( who has no real affliction with any team, Man Utd, Spurs, Bolton, Blackpool, Burnley, Preston are just some he has taken an interest in over the years),that season we had perched ourselves behind the middle exit in the Bee Hole, The games that season were great Newcastle, Leeds, Sheff Wed, big crowds, bigger feeling of belonging, although it would be another year before i would join the Longside and stand side by side with other thrill seekers. at 13 year old i would be allowed on on my own, and it would be the Bee Hole end i would stand, until about 20 minutes into the game, where the green fencing would act as a gate for the youngsters, sneaking into the covered stand, and i would make my way towards the back , as i was knee high to Chorley Claret at this time watching the games were impossible, but the thrill the atmosphere was unbelievable, it made you feel like you belong, gave you a feeling of protection, even though at other side of the wall it was saturated with urine.

Having made the transition from Bee Hole wannabee to Longside regular, i would proceed to take my place at the bottom the 3rd bar up to be exact, it was great for the younger lads, you felt the full force of the Umbaba, and you could see your heroes.

1n 1995 the Longside came down, and only 10,613 were there! and i wasn't one of those, i missed the last game on the Longside because of a pie and pee game i would have been playing in. Burnley football club has never been the same since, the belonging has gone, the roar has gone, the Turf Moor Fortress is no more.