The Longside Reference

History With Mr. T

Addicted To The Past. (And EBAY doesn’t help either.)

      Belonging to that generation of BFC supporters who lived through the glory days, it doesn’t take much to trigger and rekindle the images of those halcyon days. Don’t get me wrong; I can get just as excited in a game now as I did then. The Ian Moore last minute winner away at Bradford in 2004 which staved off relegation, The Traore own goal that won us the cup-tie against European Champions Liverpool had me off my seat in just as wild a way as any goal scored by the incomparable Connelly in the 60s, or that human battering ram Stevie Kindon in the 70s.
     
      But – the problem is there is so much memorabilia around to remind us of those wonder-years, and all so easily obtainable, that the 60s and 70s remain still bright and clear after all these years. I have to say it’s almost a curse having all these recollections, for there is no possible way that we can restore ourselves to that magnificent era when a level playing field gave us the chance to compete successfully. 

      Just a few months ago I used to possess just a few bits and pieces, a few programmes, an even smaller number of old magazines, a picture here and there and an occasional newspaper clipping tucked away in a page of one of the diaries that I keep. They were the remnants of a massive amount of paraphernalia I once had in boxes but I then just gave away when I left home for college. These few odds and ends remained to tickle the memory cells. In my travels compiling No Nay Never I met people who had collections of Burnley nostalgia that made my mouth water and I rue the day I disposed of all mine.

       And then I discovered the joys of EBAY. Addiction might just be a better word. Get the hang of it, register, punch in the word Burnley, and up come wonderful lists of programmes, magazines, books, ephemera and collectibles. The first time I looked I sat back in amazement and the first time I bid for an item and won, I was hooked. That was only 15 months ago and since then, my little collection has grown and grown and grown as I pluck out those items I can afford, just a few each month but they soon mount up. A 1947 Cup Final Programme was way beyond my resources but a Charlie Buchan magazine with a picture of Brian Pilkington on the front was one of the first things I picked up for next to nothing. A 1962 Cup Final programme was the second item I bought. There are plenty of them around and they are not expensive, a slightly damaged one came my way for under a fiver.  I was there at Wembley that day and I bought a programme. It was then one of the boxload of items foolishly I later got rid of. When you buy an old item like this today, it’s more than just the programme you acquire; it’s a whole weekend of memories you are buying. It was over 40 years ago but the faces come back, the queue for tickets, the journey, the spot where you stood, the friend you went with, and the unfortunate image of Blanchflower putting that penalty away when in fact a free kick should have been awarded to Burnley seconds earlier.

       Burnley versus Tottenham, 1962, Jimmy McIlroy et al. I’ve met Jimmy several times during the writing of No Nay Never and then the new Willie Irvine book, Together Again. An EBAY acquired colour signed picture of Jimmy is on the wall of what I call ‘The Burnley Room’ at home, which is just an upstairs spare bedroom, but now slowly but surely becoming swamped in newly obtained Burnley items. I buy those old ABC cards, and player cards and Mrs T thinks I’m entering my second childhood. Anyway, Jimmy told me a lovely story about Willie Irvine (pronounced Irvine as in ‘wine’ or Irvine as in ‘seen’?) Willie went home one summer having just broken through into the first team and was banging in the goals. Fame was already his and at home he was the local celebrity of course. Carrickfergus and there’s the big Orange Day Parade and up at the front there’s the leader marching and twirling and lobbing the huge mace with superb skill and casual aplomb. Willie full of fun leaps up, jumps out of the crowd, grabs the mace and takes over. He throws it high and looks to the heavens to follow its progress so that he is ready to catch it when it returns to earth. Bugger, it lands in the telegraph wires up above strung across the road. Consternation, Willie stands and looks, the front line of the procession marches into him and the next one into that so that chaos reigns, the procession grinds to a halt, trombones groan and the crowd collapses into hoots of laughter and hysterics. Jimmy with an impish grin swears this story is true. Willie swears with an impish grin he’s never heard of such a thing. Two Irishmen both blessed with the gift of the blarney – which one do you believe?
 
    Harry Potts: that great team he nurtured, European games, championship winners, one by one on EBAY I’ve picked up all the programmes relating to those key games against Reims, Hamburg, the FA Cup semi final game against Fulham and a Manchester City programme when we clinched the title. There should be a book about him. There will be. I’m working on it now and have met his still sprightly and vivacious wife Margaret several times already and will continue to do so until it is completed. Her memory is pin sharp and it’s as much her story as his. Few people know that his career as Burnley manager almost never happened. At the time of the appointment Margaret was seriously ill and for two pins Harry wanted to abandon the job to nurse her back to health. She insisted he carried on, what a good job she did. Had she not done so, the history of BFC would have taken a different course no doubt. There might well have been no title win, no European games, or Wembley appearance.

     Who was the greatest ever Burnley goalkeeper? Jerry Dawson, Colin McDonald, Adam Blacklaw, Harry Thomson and Alan Stephenson, what an illustrious list of names. How lucky I am to have seen them all bar Dawson, though the memories of Colin McDonald are just a little hazy. But from EBAY came one of those wonderful full-page colour pictures from an old Charlie Buchan Football Monthly where Colin is stooping to collect the ball in front of full back David Smith in an away game at White Hart Lane. It’s an artist’s picture not a photograph in wonderful bright colours and is all the better for it. It’s signed as well and all that for well less than a fiver. Meanwhile I’ll stick my neck out and say in my opinion Adam Blacklaw is the best I’ve seen.

     In the sixties it was the custom (ask Andy Lochhead) for any centre forward at the earliest possible opportunity to clatter the opposing goalkeeper. Adam Blacklaw reversed the procedure and as soon as possible would belt the opposing centre forward. One image is fixed in my mind and comes from a game against Leicester City at Turf Moor when he pole-axed a Leicester player by the name of Dave Walsh if memory serves me right. Now Walsh was no shrinking violet, with cropped hair, a face like stone from a Welsh quarry, built like a bouncer and as hard as nails. Walsh had been throwing himself about, dishing out the clog, and Adam obviously thought this must stop. A corner came over, Adam wallops him, the referee sees nothing and Walsh drops like a stone and lies totally inert on the floor. The play moves upfield so that all that remains in the 6-yard box is the prone, fully-stretched figure of Walsh, no movement whatsoever, not a sign of life in him, dead to the world, and Adam standing over his inert body with arms folded and just the slightest hint of a smirk on his face. Andy Lochhead says it was a hard game in those days, no quarter asked and none given. Right enough.

     Do you remember those old Football League Review inserts that used to be stapled inside programmes of the seventies? God forbid I used to pull them out, skim through them, and then throw them away. Now I buy them from EBAY! They’re cheap as chips and you’d be surprised how many of them have front covers featuring Burnley players. There’s one with Ray Hankin rising like a bird in a game at Oxford. There’s one of Dave Thomas flying past Wolves full back Derek Parkin. Dave idolised Harry Potts and his wife Brenda is featured in an Everton book called Real Footballers’ Wives, which is well worth a read. Dave would later join Wolves and have a thoroughly miserable time there. Keith Newton is on the next front cover I have in front of me. What a masterstroke by Adamson to bring him to Burnley on a free transfer. He was outstanding bringing with him the experience of 27 full England caps. And then there’s Ralphie. Is there, has there, ever been any Burnley player quite like the incomparable Ralphie Coates. With a body shape that defied all the known laws of athletic capability he was surely Burnley’s second greatest ever player. There’s a League Review cover with three action pictures of him. You look at them and so many memories come back, especially the hair, described in one book I have as like orange shredded wheat. I must be a Ralphie superfan – I bought two of them. I knew for quite some time that there was also one with a picture of Leighton James on the front cover. I had to wait a while before one came up, but everything comes to him who waits, as they say.

     And my favourite EBAY purchase - that’s easy. It’s the March 1967 edition of LIFE magazine. Which is the last team you would expect to find in an American prestigious glossy magazine with a worldwide circulation? I first saw it in 1967 and had a copy (disposed of) so when I saw it on EBAY I had to have it again. It has the most superb colour double-page picture of Brian O’ Neil leaping out of a tackle by David Sadler in a Man U game at Turf Moor in the mud. It is quintessential O Neil, a stunning picture. Then there are five more pages of black and white pictures. Adamson talks to Morgan in the dressing room. The caption is pure Americana; ‘when wingers are hot, Burnley usually scores well’. Players’ salaries are given in dollars. It’s 1967 but the blurb is about coach Adamson. Harry Potts is briefly likened to the producer, portly and short-fused. Was he already yesterday’s man? There’s a huge symbolic picture of young boys playing on cobbled streets. They just had to get a shot of cobbled streets; it’s a compulsory image. A very young Dave Thomas is cleaning boots in the boot room; he looks about 12 years old. Keith Noddings is sweeping the terraces. Who was he, where did he go, what happened to him? And then there’s a picture of the corridor outside the dressing rooms with mascot Paul Lonsdale aged 9. He’ll be 47 now. Is he still in Burnley, still supporting maybe? Life is full of coincidences. I interviewed ex Burnley secretary Albert Maddox when I was writing the Harry Potts book. Albert fished out an old scrapbook he had borrowed to show me. The scrapbook belonged to Paul Londsdale of all people, now a friend of Albert’s son in law.

     And then there are scrapbooks. How many of us kept a scrapbook in our youth? I did and as luck would have it, or bad luck as the case may be, it was a scrapbook of the championship season in 59/60. The bad luck bit is the fact that it was one of the many items I gave away years ago. What would I give to get it back? It was packed with reports, cuttings, pictures and features. Just occasionally a scrapbook will be advertised on EBAY but they don’t go cheap. I did acquire another one but it’s a sad story really. Alan was someone I met several years ago in a meeting in Leeds. He was a Burnley boy but lived and worked in Wakefield. We soon got talking about all things Claret, met a couple more times at subsequent meetings and then had no further contact. That must have been at least three years ago. Then just before Christmas 04 a phone call came from Alan. He had just finished reading No Nay Never and had tracked me down. He wanted to say how much he had enjoyed it he said and in the section on the seventies at the end of the book the tears of nostalgia had rolled down his face. I learned why. He was dieing. Cancer had set in and he was beyond the recovery stage. His last visit to Burnley had been a few months previously and he had known then it would be the last. “But I’m comfortable with it,” he said. “I’ve no qualms, I’m ready.” He even joked that having seen the football we were playing it was no bad thing. I laughed with him and marvelled at his calm acceptance.
      We chatted for a while about this and that. He had chosen to spend his last few weeks at home rather than in a hospice. And then he mentioned he wondered if I would be interested in giving a good home to his scrapbooks. The last thing he wanted was that they would just be cast aside and thrown away. I was deeply touched, who wouldn’t be and we arranged for me to see him at home in Wakefield and he would have them ready. A week or so later I drove over and expected nothing more than perhaps two or three of them. But what he had ready had me open mouthed in astonishment. Four great plastic tote boxes were stacked up in the living room. They were full of huge wallpaper books that he had converted into scrapbooks covering the sixties and seventies. There was a suitcase and in it were heaps of videos, some that he had taped himself from TV programmes and other ones that he had bought, great games, great moments, hours and hours of viewing. Another holdall contained his extensive Burnley book collection; a carrier bag was crammed with programmes. I just didn’t know what to say but a few words of thanks stumbled their way out. I went to see him a couple more times after that but at the end the pain was so great he did have to enter a hospice where he died at the age of only 59. He took two books in with him and one of them was No Nay Never said his former wife who had returned to nurse him. At that point when she told me that over the phone, the tears rolled down my cheeks.

     His funeral was at Burnley Crematorium. I made sure I was last out and stood by the coffin for several seconds with my Burnley scarf held high in silent tribute. The ‘celebration’ afterwards was at Turf Moor. His favourite player Willie Irvine came along to talk and chat and his family and friends were just delighted at Willie’s gesture. “Oh my favourite player,” he had said when I told him that was the book I was working on. I’d hoped that Alan could read the first draft and perhaps even add to it, but he was taken into a hospice and passed away before I could let him see it.
    
     Alan if you’re up there watching you’ll be pleased to know that the scrapbooks are giving me so much reference material for the Harry Potts book I’m working on now. Life works in funny ways and your gift to me was just priceless. A few scrapbooks indeed: you gave me a veritable archive. God bless. Alan Bailey 1946 – 2005.

Dave Thomas  May 2005.