Burnley Memorabilia And Programmes

Tuesday 15th September 1959

Preston North End 1 - 0 Burnley
 

Att: 27,299

Teams
Preston North End: Else, Cunningham, Walton, Milne, Dunn, O'Farrell, Finney, Sneddon, Alston, Lambert, Taylor.

Burnley: Blacklaw, Angus, Elder, Adamson, Cummings, Miller, Connelly, White, Pointer, Robson, Pilkington.

Referee        Mr.L.J.Hamer    (Halifax)
Linesmen       Mr.L.Barlow and Mr.J.B.Coleman

The Clarets went into this local rivals game having to make team changes for the first time this season, with both Jimmy McIlroy and Bobby Seith being injured, Alex Elder for Seith and Billy White for McIlroy. This was Elders first ever game for Burnley.The Clarets fans travelled the short distance to Deepdale with high expectations of a victory after having beaten North End 2-1 at Turf Moor the previous week, but as even Clarets of today know you can never ever predict which Burnley team will turn up, and true to form it was to be a night of disappointment for those that travelled.

Alex Elder was playing for Burnley for the first time and was up against the mighty Tom Finney, how much bigger a debut can you get?

Alex learned his lesson very quickly indeed when inside the first ten minutes Finney had headed North End into a 1-0 lead with Elder having failed to pick up his man, but that was the only time for the rest of the game that Finney would not have his marker by his side, in fact Elder covered every blade of grass following Finney around the pitch.

After the goal it was Burnley doing most of the attacking with Connelly in particular giving the Preston defence a hard time.

Burnley's youthful enthusiasm was not a match though for the experienced men of Preston who were catching them offside on too many occasions. The Clarets were definitely missing the skills of Jimmy McIlroy, although his replacement White was working hard, his passing accuracy was nowhere near that of the missing maestro.

As the game progressed the physical side of Preston's game came to the fore with their hard man defender Willie Cunningham paying close attention to Brian Pilkington. The young Clarets gave as much as they could back, but they could not penetrate the Preston defence and this tough encounter finished with a victory to North End by one goal to nil.

Although the travelling Clarets fans were disappointed with the result, they appreciated the difficult debut that Elder had and he left the pitch to rapturous applause. Little did the fans know at this point, the extent that Elder was to make his mark on this team.

Programme Review

The Preston team as printed, but Burnley enforced to make three changes, Elder in for Seith, with Cummings moving to centre half and White in for McIlroy.

Preston's programme in my view was a very poor 16 page offering, with very little in the way of interesting features, but lots of small adverts.The club notes were very brief, with the content being all about past games at Deepdale against the Clarets.

They made reference to the very first game against us at Deepdale which was a friendly on August 16th 1884, also mentioning the fact that there had been 36 league encounters with us at Deepdale, they had won 24, we had won 8 and 4 had been drawn.

Looking through the adverts in the programme I have noticed two which interest me. The first being for Wiilie Cunningham's sports shop, which by the way were the official suppliers to Preston North End.

And the second being an advert for Tom Finney's electrical and plumbing business.