The Longside Reference

Tuesday 8th September 1959.

Burnley 2 - 1 Preston North End

Goalscorers: Robson, Pointer.

Att: 29,195

Teams
Burnley: Blacklaw, Angus, Cummings, Seith, Miller, Adamson, Connelly, McIlroy, Pointer, Robson, Pilkington

Preston North End: Else, Cunningham, Walton, Fullam, Dunn, O'Farrell, Finney, Milne, Hatsell, Sneddon, Taylor

Referee      Mr.K.A.Collinge   Rochdale
Linesmen   Mr.B.Dennett and Mr.H.Tonge

  
The early exchanges saw Burnley doing most of the approach work and as expected Cunningham playing his normal hardman role he soon had Pilkington laid flat out on the pitch from a very late tackle.

Burnley carried on taking the game to North End, but without that cutting edge needed to win games. Missed chances were in abundance from all the Burnley forward line, any threat from Preston came through Finney but Angus was keeping the maestro fairly quiet.

It was Sneddon who broke the deadlock when he chipped the ball over the advancing Blacklaw and the North End were 1-0 up.The goal wakened up North End and they took up the mantle and started to play the better football, Sneddon again forcing Blacklaw into a super double save.

This save from Blacklaw seemed to give the Clarets the boost that they needed and now it was Burnley who were on top, continuing to pressurise the North End defence but without being able to make the required breakthrough. At the start of the second half, Burnley appeared to have come out with renewed vigour and they were the ones who were doing all the attacking, with Else in the Preston goal having to save shot after shot.

With only twenty minutes of the game left Pointer headed home the equaliser from a sweet cross from Connelly. The Clarets continued to storm the North End goal, Else was in tremendous form and he single handedly was managing to keep the Clarets at bay. With only minutes left on the clock Connelly once again crossed in a beauty which Robson managed to get his head to, the ball ended up in the back of the net and Burnley had won the game by 2 goals to 1.

Programme Review

Teams as printed apart from one change for North End with Fullam replacing Smith at left half.Amazingly the Clarets were able to field an unchanged side for the sixth game running.

Harry Potts Calling

This week Harry made reference to the continued wonderful weather but due to the hard pitches he felt that it was not helping with the injury situation in particular to David Smith and Trevor Meredith who were both casualties with broken legs. He was also happy to report that Colin McDonald was back in light training.

Praise was given to the youngsters who played a big part in their recent win over Rovers reserves at Turf Moor

He also printed this statement, which I found of interest especially in light of the recent bad publicity of poor gamesmanship in today's Premiership.

" As you are aware, the Football Association has this year issued instructions to all League Clubs by letter to advise their players to cut out poor gamesmanship and other unsavoury practices that bring discredit to the game of football. I do not think we shall have much to worry about in that respect regarding our staff. We most certainly will do our best to ensure that is so because here at Burnley we feel that if everybody concerned- officials, players, spectators-play their part towards this admirable intention it will help the game in general to an enormous extent and must bring about a great improvement in football to the advantage of our own league competitions and the vast improvement of our national status in the international field. I do hope that this season will see great progress made in these directions. "

Now wouldn't it be great if the likes of Mourhino and Ferguson could print statements like that today?

One advert this week of personal interest was the rail trip to Blackpool Illuminations at just 5s/3d return, a bargain if ever I saw one. I just used to love getting on the train at Burnley Barracks station and heading off for the lights, a real treat for us youngsters during the 50's.and 60's. My biggest memory of those trains was that wonderful smell of the smoke from the train chimney, ah I can just smell it now, looking down the line for the train approaching the Barracks from Burnley Central, shrieking out at the first signs of smoke and then finding a carriage with a corridor, you were the bees knees if you had a corridor. Then all piling onto one side of the train looking out for the first glimpse of Blackpool Tower, 3d for the first to shout out that they had seen it. Oh my them were the days.