The Longside Reference

HISTORY WITH MR T.
TURNING POINTS

FA Cup Replay February 20th, 1963,

 
Liverpool 2 Burnley 1

     There are, in the great universal scheme of things, some results that matter, some that don’t and just very occasionally we can say that one particular result is a ‘turning point’ in the history of a club. If a ‘turning point’ is a result that has such far-reaching effects that a whole course of events is initiated, an era ends, or an era begins, or the story of a club takes a new and dramatic turn, then Liverpool 2 Burnley 1 on February 20th, 1963, is surely one of them.
 
    When Burnley beat Tottenham 3 – 0 at White Hart Lane in the third round of the FA Cup in season 1962/63, people might just have been forgiven for thinking that Wembley was once again a realistic target. Beaten 3 – 1 in the previous season’s Final at Wembley by Spurs, in a game when Burnley never really got going, the 3 – 0 win at Tottenham was sweet revenge. It was a game on an ice-bound pitch, that was surprisingly vicious and ugly, with Tottenham the culprits as they hacked and fouled their way through the game. Bob Lord was no doubt as pleased as Punch as images of future cash and increased ticket sales must have danced around in his head. The return journey north was undoubtedly a happy one as he contemplated his Turf Moor Empire still intact and progressing nicely, even if not quite as elegantly and consistently as the three previous seasons, as one or two of the senior players were clearly nearing the end of their peak performances. But to counter that, the Gawthorpe conveyor belt was still working overtime.

     In the next round Burnley were drawn at home to Liverpool. Surmount that hurdle, it was felt, and the road to Wembley was surely as good as wide open and obstacle free. Drawn at home however, Burnley could only draw the first game on January 26th, 1 – 1, with a goal scored by John Connelly. Then, as winter played havoc with fixtures and programmes, the appalling conditions delayed the replay until February 20th.      

     In the League Burnley did not play one game between December 29th and March 2nd. The significance of that was simply this – there was no income for two months – but wages still had to be paid. This factor was hugely significant and would play a big part in the events and decisions that took place towards the end of February in the aftermath of the Liverpool defeat.  
 
     I suppose you could argue that the game played at Turf Moor prior to this game was the turning point, since the 1 – 1 draw meant that the replay would then be necessary. But I choose the replay as the pivotal game, because it was in that game that just one bizarre error decided the outcome, and then set in motion a chain of events which shook Burnley in particular, and the world of football in general, to the core. It is hard to imagine that today any Burnley player would attract national attention by reason of being placed on the transfer list, but when Jimmy McIlroy was transfer-listed just a few days after the Liverpool game, the world of football reporting went into overtime. With McIlroy an established Burnley legend and lauded as one of the best half dozen players in the country, every football reporter in the country was amazed and stunned as the printing presses went into overtime. And what made it all the more remarkable was that the catalyst for all of this, was just one simple goalkeeping miskick.

     In extra time manager Harry Potts could only look on in amazement and horror as Adam Blacklaw as good as gifted the game to Liverpool. Blacklaw was a tremendous goalkeeper, one of Burnley’s best ever. But even the greatest make mistakes and this one was in a high profile game in the FA Cup. With the score 1 – 1 was it a mistake though, or just a huge slice of bad luck? Maybe it was a mixture of both as Blacklaw elected to kick a back-pass from Alex Elder straight back up the field from the edge of the area.  Instead of reaching one of the Burnley forwards, the ball simply thudded into Ian St. John the Liverpool striker who was just yards away. St. John was after it in a flash and would have put it into the back of the net if Blacklaw had not brought him down. Ronnie Moran put the resultant penalty away and Blacklaw was close to tears afterwards. Such is goalkeeping. It had been Blacklaw in fact who had kept Burnley in both ties for so long with strings of great saves and interceptions until the fateful last few moments of extra time when the game was only seconds away from another replay.

      Jimmy McIlroy came in for criticism, according to Press reports, rarely seen in an attacking role, spending long periods in no man’s land, ineffective, meandering, generally disappointing and never living up to his reputation. It would be his last game for Burnley Football Club. An era was over. Newspapers pointed to the defensive style of Burnley on the night, packing their defence, rarely putting Liverpool under any pressure. If these tactics had been deliberate, and McIlroy later said that he had only been playing to instructions, they had backfired with a vengeance.

     On the Sunday following the cup-tie and Burnley’s dismissal, Bob Lord called a meeting at his Lowerhouse factory. On the Monday after this meeting it was Harry Potts who made the announcement that the club had decided to put Jimmy McIlroy on the open to transfer list.

     Potts refused to make any other comment save that it was a club matter. When the news hit the streets in the evening newspaper there wasn’t a supporter who wasn’t shocked, speechless or baffled. There is no official record of any meeting between Potts and Lord in between the cup-tie and the board meeting. One can only assume that they did meet and must have had some discussions about McIlroy, since Lord in fact announced that it had been Potts’ recommendation that McIlroy should be listed.

     The Daily Mirror referred to it as a ruthless and mysterious decision and Jimmy McIlroy himself has never accepted that it was Potts’ choice to take this action. He was called into Potts’ office and told the news. Little elaboration came from Potts himself and it was McIlroy who gave the gist of the conversation between himself and Potts, to the Press. “I went into Harry’s office and he told me straight out that the board of directors at a special meeting had decided on his recommendation to place me on the transfer list. I asked him why and he said that he was not satisfied with my playing efforts. In fact he said he was disappointed in me and there was nothing more to it.” McIlroy added that it had been explained to him that it was purely to do with the playing side of things, nothing to do with finance, and there was no friction between himself, Potts, Lord or any of the other directors. In short he was baffled. Surely he reasoned if he was playing badly the normal thing was to place him in the reserves for a spell. When reporters brought up the subject of the Liverpool game, McIlroy explained that he had been playing to Potts’ instructions, to drop deep and take a defensive role.

     After the meeting Potts suggested to McIlroy that he miss training and go home. This he duly did and gave the news to his equally shocked wife Barbara.

     Everyone who possessed pen and paper put down their views including Tom Finney and Danny Blanchflower. “Burnley must speak up,” wrote Finney who added that from McIlroy had come a comment about being caught up in club politics. Perhaps this was in connection with the buying and selling of Burnley Football Club shares and that this involved McIlroy’s father-in-law, a simple enough matter, but probably not as far as Bob Lord was concerned. Perhaps it involved his friendship with one particular director with whom Bob Lord did not get on. Jimmy Adamson had warned him to be careful about this friendship. McIlroy’s answer was that he wasn’t going to have Bob Lord choosing his friends for him. After the Liverpool game McIlroy had returned to Burnley not in the team coach but in the director’s son’s car. One can well imagine Lord’s scowls at that. It might well have been the last straw for Mr. Lord.

       Blanchflower’s lengthy piece in the Sunday Express hinted at darker reasons, that other players were perhaps resentful of McIlroy’s star status, the back-slaps he received, the higher salary he was on, thus inferring that club harmony was fragmenting and that McIlroy’s sacrifice was the way to restore it and was necessary to avoid higher wage demands by other players now that the maximum wage had been abolished and not all players were paid the same. Blanchflower alleged that he had spoken at length to McIlroy and dwelt in his column on the way that McIlroy would feel until his transfer was resolved, the vacuum that would exist around him, his isolation, the uneasiness displayed by others in the dressing room.

     And then Blanchlower wrote something else. “It must be finance.”

     “When they beat Tottenham, Bob Lord and his merry men probably thought they would win the cup. But Liverpool had other ideas. Another cup run to Wembley would have put thousands of pounds in the Burnley kitty. Maybe they were counting on that and on the added support that a good cup run would bring to their League matches. It’s been a hard winter. Funds are low all round. McIlroy is getting more money than the others. Perhaps the others are starting to ask for the same. Simple solution: sell McIlroy, get some cash, cut the feet from under the others with regards to asking for more. That’s better for the club in the long run or at least it would seem to be.”

     Then, to add to Blanchflower’s thoughts, McIlroy himself wrote a piece in the Daily Express. He too alluded to the possible discontent felt by other players that he was on a far higher salary. He questioned the legendary family spirit of the club and suggested in fact that faint ripples of dissension were beginning to show as a result of the new differences in wages. In the same piece he quite clearly suggests that on the playing field other players were not quite in tune with him, that they had had enough of the sound of his voice and that some of them in no uncertain terms were now telling him to shut-up. It made him feel he said, “like a general without a baton.”

     As time has passed by people have forgotten about these two articles but in them I am sure there lies the key to understanding what the McIlroy transfer was all about. To this you can add that even if he was not playing well, he still had a saleable value and saleable values were what kept Burnley Football Club in the black and able to compete. And in this particularly bad winter club finances were stretched to the limit.

     A number of things are clear. Since December 29th the club had received little income through the turnstiles and finances were verging on the desperate. Money was urgently needed. Added to this were grandiose club plans to build a giant new stand. Other players were looking at McIlroy’s higher wage. It was perhaps a matter of time before they would be knocking on Lord’s door demanding parity. And added to all of these were the minor irritations regarding McIlroy’s friendships; and his disappearance after the Liverpool game in a director’s son’s car, instead of with the other players. Maybe injuries prevented him from training on a regular basis, a situation guaranteed to irritate other players who never missed a day at Gawthorpe. Perhaps there is no one single reason for the transfer but maybe it is a whole number of things that can be combined together. But one thing is sure, that whilst we can surmise and theorise as much as we want, only two people, Potts and Lord, know the real answer, and both of them lie buried together in Read Churchyard. 

     All kinds of theories and explanations have been put forward over the years for the decision that was made. Perhaps it really was just the simplest one; the one that people can’t quite accept because of its uncomplicated simplicity; that even the incomparable legend, Jimmy Mac, had at last reached his sell-by date, as so many others before him had done, and others after him would surely follow, and the trigger was just one simple miskick in the dieing seconds of a Cup game.

POTTS ENDS HIS SILENCE was the headline on March 6th after Burnley and Stoke City had sealed the deal to take McIlroy to the Potteries. Lord stayed silent and it was left to Potts to make the statements.
     “When I first told Jimmy McIlroy last Monday that Burnley had decided to put him on the transfer list, it was agreed between us that there should be no public slanging match. I have seen that this has not occurred and because of it I am unable to say to the Press until now any more than that this was a club matter. Now I can tell you our side of the story. Jimmy McIlroy has left Burnley and the only person responsible for this is Jimmy himself.”

     Potts explained further: McIlroy had not been giving 100%. Because of this he was a luxury the club could not afford and Jimmy on his own admission had become complacent. He could have remained at Turf Moor for the rest of his playing days with a third benefit and a testimonial game to be arranged. But his lack of effort was the reason behind the decision to sell him.

     A turning point in the club’s history… Liverpool v Burnley, February 20th 1963…  a moment in time when a simple unfortunate error initiated a series of events that just a couple of weeks later resulted in a Burnley without Jimmy McIlroy… it certainly marked the end of one era and the start of a new one. For almost a decade McIlroy and Burnley had been synonymous but as a result of his transfer whole groups of supporters stayed away from Turf Moor and the acrimony lasted for a long, long time. Burnley without McIlroy was almost like toast without jam, Morecambe without Wise.

      By the end of the season Burnley had attained a creditable third place. But for the next couple of seasons things were far from smooth, ‘transition’ Lord and Potts called it. Eventually the marvellous team of ‘65/66 emerged, which until Christmas of that season was all-conquering, a team that could well have won the championship with greater consistency in the second half of the season. But then it too was broken up and players sold one by one. When McIlroy was sold he was still only 31, who knows what might have been achieved if he had been allowed to give another couple of good seasons to the Burnley cause. But, because of one unfortunate goalkeeper error, and a defeat at Anfield, we shall never know.

Dave Thomas November 2005.