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Blast from the Past: Brian O Neil
 It took over nine hours to get to see Brian O Neil.
Let me explain.
Mrs T has two sisters, one in Sussex and one in Southampton. Brian lives in Southampton and I thought OK I’d contact him and fix up a meeting. So many things I’d like to ask him. We were due to visit sister number one in Sussex, so from there just an hour away was Brian who lives near the old Dell football ground. A normal trip from Leeds to Sussex is maybe a little over four hours when there are no hold-ups. This time, the day that we travelled must surely go down as one of the worst in the history of the M1, the journey took over eight hours as we encountered pile up after pile up and delay after delay. Even then having left the M1 we then crawled for over an hour the few miles from junction 16, from where the motorway was totally closed, along Watling Street to Towcester. At journey’s end we were brain dead.
Four days later we drove on to sister number two in Southampton. Thankfully, Brian offered to drive out to the suburb of Netley Abbey to meet up, which saved me driving in circles round and round Southampton trying to find him. The two and a half hours we spent talking then flew by.
Supporters of the 1960s generation will remember him clearly. He rightfully belongs to that small family of players we refer to as legends. He was small, slight, but prodigiously talented. Today he would walk into any Premiership team. With Premiership nets catching any player of talent before they can even walk, it is unlikely that players like him will ever again be home grown at small clubs like Burnley. Recent Burnley players like Chaplow would pale into insignificance beside him. In any attempt to define what it is that makes the hearts of football, on the playing side, Brian O Neil is the embodiment of what it is. Single minded, utterly brave, totally competitive and resolute, there was no other thought in his mind but to be on the pitch, play, win the ball, and then do something with it. If, to be a great footballer you have to have heart, then Brian O Neil had one the size of a dinner plate.
Burnley still means everything to him, he said, and like so many players of the time speaks glowingly of Harry Potts, but rather less so of Jimmy Adamson who became Potts’ number two, and then took over fully in 1970. The one said just go out and play your normal game, gave simple uncomplicated instructions, gave them their heads, encouraged flair and attacking, loved wingers, and told them to enjoy things. The other filled their heads with instructions, numbers, tactics and formations which after 1966 and Ramsey was the new football. Training sessions were constantly stopped. “You should be here, you should be doing that, you should be marking him; this is what you should be doing…”
He remembers the time they beat Sunderland 4 – 0 at Roker Park, and went top of Division One. This was the side that many said was better than the championship side. “We were young, we didn’t need coaching, we played instinctively, but once Jimmy Adamson got his feet under the table things changed. Instead of beating a man, taking the ball on, it was look for the safe pass… do this… do that… any natural instinct to get by an opponent was replaced by unnecessary passing. Taking a player on was effectively discouraged. Don’t try and beat a player, just look for the pass. Adamson stifled us.”
O Neil thinks it was Adamson making all the decisions in the late 60s even though Potts was still manager. “The club then was unsettled; nobody knew who was in charge. I wanted a transfer largely because of Adamson. He was easing me out; I wasn’t part of his plans. I was devastated when Gordon Harris was sold. He and I could have played together blindfolded. He was sold in ’68 and I never really got over that. I don’t think Jimmy ever forgot Gordon had thumped him in training years earlier. A number of us were delighted when Gordon decked him and were pleased to see him taken down a peg or two. As a player I always had and still have the greatest respect for him, and if I’m in Burnley try to see Jimmy. But Jimmy had no time for anyone with a mind of their own or who answered him back.”
Brian remembered his early days. “As a young lad my mother used to show me the big houses round about where we lived and say things like ‘we should be living there,’ and I never really took any notice. But years later just before my father died he told me that Man United had been one club after me and had offered to buy them a house and give them an open cheque. My father had obviously turned them down probably because he liked Jack Hixon the scout up in the northeast. I was one of a family of nine and my father was the only one working and earning a wage. He took me down to Arsenal. I played in one trial game, played against Tommy Docherty on the opposition team. I scored. But we had one night in the hotel, I should have been there for a week or maybe two, but my father decided one night was enough, London wasn’t for him or me, and back we went.”
So it was Burnley that attracted the O Neil family and Brian remembers one of the first games he played in. “It was against Blackburn and Harry told me to sit on Bryan Douglas and mark him out of the game and if I did that then the game would just come to me. Well, in the first half I kicked Douglas a few times, he faded, he didn’t want to know, and Harry was right, after that the game came to me and in the second half I ran the show.”
In his Burnley time he remembers certain people with fondness. “Willie Irvine couldn’t trap a table but always knew where the ball and the goal was. Even if the ball was only a couple of feet off the floor he’d stick his head in.
“Andy Lochhead… there’ll never be another player like him, the player of the century. He made it so easy for us and his heading was so educated. There was one game we won 7 – 2 against Tottenham and one of the goals I still remember. Andy headed the ball in so deliberately over the goalkeeper’s head from the far post. It was brilliant. Having him up front gave us such confidence".
Every player seems to have one particular coach that they remember with special affection and respect. In O Neil’s case it was George Bray. “George Bray influenced me such a lot. He once brought out a medicine ball, one of those solid heavy things. He just dropped it on the floor and said ‘right now fella, tackle that.’ He did the simple things in his coaching but did them so well.
“Harry Potts was like a father, he’d have a smile, a laugh; you can’t put your finger on what it was. He spoke sense, gave confidence, he never belittled anyone. Adamson did. He was arrogant.
“Dave Thomas was a brilliant winger. Left or right foot he could cross the ball with either. We met last season when Burnley played at Southampton. This voice called out to me and it was Dave. You never ever could use your left foot I shouted back at him.”
“I was unhappy and unsettled by 1970 and asked for a transfer. Get it in the Sunday papers someone told me. So in the Sunday papers there were headlines like O Neil Wants Transfer. Bob Lord was not pleased when he saw I had talked to reporters. He beckoned me over on the Monday morning. He was a great man but I was terrified of him. ‘What’s all this then,’ he wanted to know and told me to retract all that I had said and if I did that, ‘he’d see me alright at the end of the season.’ At the end of the season he would see I got an extra 7000. I never got the 7000; he sold me to Southampton instead.
“One morning he told me to get into his car. Up Pike Hill we went and way out somewhere onto the Moors. He stopped and parked the car alongside another car. A bloke got out the other car and it was Ted Bates from Southampton. ‘Go and talk to him,’ said Lord. I talked to him and returned to Bob Lord. ‘Well,’ said Lord. ‘Have you talked to him?’ I’m going tomorrow I told him. Bob Lord had a tear in his eye when I told him that.
“Moving from Harry Potts to Ted Bates was fine. They were so similar. It was like going from one cradle to another.”
Before leaving Burnley O Neil feels his best ever time was the 65/66 season. “I was just awesome then,” he tells his daughters today. (He was indeed awesome, as anyone who saw him play will confirm). “Me and Gordon Harris were the best midfield in the game. I got in the England 22 but that was as far as I got, though I did play for the Football League at Hampden. It was a time when I could run through brick walls and would do anything for Potts.”
Potts meanwhile used to come home after training and the 5 a side games, bath, and then come down to show his wife Margaret the cuts and bruises. “That’s a little bit of Brian O Neil,” Harry, smiling, would tell Margaret, rolling up his trouser leg and showing her a bruise.
O Neil played in the infamous games against Naples in the Inter Cities Fairs Cup. “Harry warned us what to expect over there, pushing, pulling, nipping, spitting, ankle tapping. Before we even got on the pitch their fans had half wrecked the ground. ‘Just keep calm,’ he said. After the game, it might have been Sivori one of their players came off crying, and there was a set of steps we had to go down to get down to the changing rooms. ‘I’ll make you cry you so-and-so….” said Harry to whoever it was and got hold of him and thumped him.
At this time O Neil kept pigs at Towneley. “I had an old VW van and after training used to go round collecting the swill. I could never kill them myself though. We’d sell them on but never to Bob Lord. I was always interested in farming and animals and later at Southampton had another smallholding and raised calves.”
Brian O Neil never played for England and this still baffles some Burnley supporters. My own theory is simply this. He was TOO good and Ramsey simply wanted the one-dimensional, robot-like Stiles who could win the ball OK, but then was simply expected to give it to the nearest better player. He did it well, but that in a nutshell was the sum total of Stiles’ ability. O Neil could do that just as well, but having won the ball he then had the complete range of skills to do more, the 40 yard pass, the ability to beat a man, the skill to take it on another 30 yards on his own, the flair to see an opening, get to the penalty area and unleash a ferocious shot. That Ramsey didn’t want, and presumably didn’t trust him not to lose the ball. All he wanted was Stiles to deliver the ball to Charlton or Ball or Peters who would then do the clever things. With Ramsey, flair was out unless your name was Charlton. O Neil was too good.
The best and worst player he ever played against was Billy Bremner. “Nasty player but what a great one as well. If he ticked so did Leeds. Stop Bremner and you stopped Leeds. It was Bremner who put me out of the game for a lengthy spell. I’d got by two players and shaped for a shot at the edge of the box. Bremner came in with his foot up knee high and kept it there. Potts was furious and raced up to Bremner ‘you dirty little so and so,’ he yelled at him. That was my knee done and the doctor said it would have been better had I broken my leg, it would have healed quicker. Harry could see the tackle coming and had to be restrained from having a real go at Bremner.” O Neil still thinks though that Leeds were the best side he ever played against.
His worst time was easy for him to recall. “It was leaving Burnley. Burnley set me up for life, taught me right and wrong, taught me the right way. Showed us to know ourselves if we weren’t giving 100%. Harry Potts never needed to say anything. We knew ourselves.
“And so I moved to Southampton. I’ve been best pals with Mick Channon ever since. I met all the players, shook hands as you do, but the first thing Mick said was ‘do you want to buy a horse?’ So I bought a horse with him, and in its time it won at Ascot and Goodwood. I see him once a month now.
“Ted Bates was easy to get on with. He used to use a Subbuteo football game and he’d give us all our jobs to do as he flicked the little players up in the air in the dressing room. ‘This is you Mick, this is you Jimmy, this is you Brian,’ he’d say and there was a game against Sheffield United who had that great player, Tony Currie. ‘Feel him out early,’ said Ted and flicked the Subbuteo player that was me up in the air. Anyway, Currie hurt himself as I was running alongside him and did his ankle himself. He had to be stretchered off by the St Johns and I saw Ted grinning at me giving me the big thumbs up. Thing is, he did himself. I never touched him.
“Mick and I today though have a lot of laughs. We’d play a game at Burnley and Mick remembers a game when I went in to tackle him and to get out of the way he just about jumped over the dugout. ‘Oi’d’ve been stupid not to wouldn oi?’ says Mick.
The death of Peter Osgood saddened O Neil enormously. When Osgood played for Southampton and there was a home game he always stayed with O Neil on a Friday night. “When I was only a young lad at Burnley I remember watching a game, standing on the Longside with my mates and seeing Osgood play and score then. He could only have been a teenager but he stood out so much. He had a wonderful funeral and I wanted to give his wife a blue rose in memory of his Chelsea days. I bought her a Rhapsody In Blue rose bush that we planted in his garden. When it flowered I visited her and we sat and drank champagne and cried.”
Today Brian O Neil is a delight to talk to. It’s absolutely obvious there isn’t a devious or unkind thought in his head, or that he bears anyone ill will, even though many a player in his time left his mark on him. He made no great fortune from the game in spite of his supreme talent. He is 63 now and health problems as long ago as 1990 have left him slightly disabled but he is trim, dapper, looks well and is happy as Larry with his daughters, Jenny and Katie, and two grandchildren nearby. He visits old colleagues, does gardening work for ‘old folk,’ one of whom was an ex Yorkshire cricketer. “He’s dead now and I can’t remember his name. I used to pull out the heavy roller he had and ask him what sort of wicket do you want today?” He has complementary tickets for Southampton, continues his friendship with Mick Channon, is always delighted to visit Burnley whenever there is a dinner and reunion, and clearly loves to talk about the old days.
“The thing I miss most is living in sin,” he says grinning mischievously, (the grin and a twinkle in his eye rarely leaves his face). “I can’t remember last week, I can’t remember last month, but I do remember living in sin years ago.” He still has family in the northeast; three sisters and two brothers remain, but seldom goes back since his mother and father died.
Brian O Neil belongs to an age when football was hard, no quarter asked and none given. There was an evening when both Burnley and Liverpool were travelling back after away games. The two teams both stopped at Stone in Staffordshire for a meal. The players mixed together and as O Neil and the legendary Tommy Smith sat talking, Bill Shankly walked by. “Murderers,” he growled at them as he passed by. He thinks back wistfully to his time as a player alongside Lochhead, Harris, Coates and Morgan at Burnley. Then at Southampton there were the likes of Channon, Terry Paine (he could kick a bit), Jimmy Gabriel and Ron Davies. He watches the sanitised game of today, sees the lack of wingers, the lack of players who can dribble and beat a man, the over-coaching, the smothering tactics and soft players, and shakes his head.
Two and a half hours later I had to make sure Brian stopped talking so that he could leave to be in time to collect one of his grandchildren. We never got to talking about leaving Southampton, his horse ownership days, naming one of his calves after Peter Osgood, his brief spell at Huddersfield, a spell as manager at Bideford in Devon, and then life after football. Maybe there will be a second meeting next time I get to Southampton. He’ll be there for the Burnley game in January. It might be unfair to ask him which of the two teams he’d like to see promoted to the Premiership. I have a hunch though he might just say Burnley. “The last time I came to Burnley I was driving up the motorway in the most appalling rain and weather but I was so happy… because I was coming back to Burnley.”
Just one last thing; my fingers are crossed that next time the M1 journey isn’t as bad as the last one. It couldn’t be… surely… could it? But was the trip worth it? Undoubtedly yes.
Dave Thomas August 2006.
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