The Longside Reference

1962: Funny The Things We Remember After All These Years.

     It doesn’t take much for the mind to start wandering during a dull game. And it’s funny how the most trivial thing can set a train of thought in motion. It was a halftime announcement that set me thinking one weekend. This one was asking for a ‘somebody Cockroft’ to report to the nearest steward.

     And stewards: it’s a rare occasion when fans have anything positive to say about them. At our club they do these exercises when the tannoy announces that it is a code green emergency and will all stewards in the Red stand please move to their stations. Well, the one next to us looked suitably puzzled, fished out his mobile, punched in a number and then asked, “er which is the Red stand?” 

     Anyway… Cockroft… the name rang a bell… and slowly I remembered… I used to have a pal called Ed Cockroft and as the mists of time cleared, it all began to come back…

     … I’ve only ever played hooky from school once but it was in a worthy cause and I did have my parents blessing. How could they refuse given the occasion, and given half the chance my father, the description Dickensian was made for him, would have done the same too except that he was on the other side of a desk, the Deputy Head in a little primary school in Todmorden.

     The occasion was Cup Final weekend in 62 and seeing as how my pal Ed’s brother was a rookie doctor in London, not that we cared that he was a rookie, what we cared about was that he had a flat where we could stay on Friday and Saturday night. I even remember his brother’s name – Gerald – which in a one street place like Todmorden we all thought was frightfully posh in those days, but then his dad (and Ed’s) did own a cotton mill, although with the economy being what it was in those days it wouldn’t be a cotton mill much longer.

    God what happy days they were, steam train days; we used to watch them from the windows of Tod Grammar School and on a really good day clouds of steam and smoke would come in through the open classroom windows. There was one day when with our straight faced ageing female spinster English teacher, who when sitting down resembled a sack of spuds, and we were reading Shakespeare and there was one line that we always enjoyed which went along the lines of “I do smell all horse piss” which even Miss Maw, for that was her name, could not delete from the pages of her beloved Shakespeare. And just as it was my turn to read this classic line, the smoke billowed in through the open window and diverted her attention away from our adolescent howls of laughter.

   But anyway back to the point of this essay – the Cup Final. We caught the steam train (which is what diverted me in the first place) from Todmorden to Manchester and just out of interest Tod station was where many an embryonic Burnley footballer landed and was met by Albert Maddox. “Is this Burnley?” they would ask, askance, to which Albert I like to think replied, “Good God no lad, Burnley ho ho, is even worse than this.”

     Then it was change stations in Manchester in an age when a railway station really was a place of noise, bustle and excitement and the station buffet sold what we called ‘station slab cake’ a cake so inedible it was only edible if you dunked it in your tea and seeing as the tea too was almost undrinkable it was a foolish person who bought either of them. And when we got in our carriage, corridor type for the use of, and settled in our seats, the only occupants thus far, one more small frail old chap arrived. He looked as though a gust of sudden wind would blow him over and he wore a suit with a waistcoat and tie and carried a raincoat over his arm.  He looked so aged and lined but we didn’t stare – much. And the train departed and it must have become clear to this little old man that we were on our way to the Cup Final. ‘Up fer the cup,’ as they said in those distant days.

     He spoke. Being Grammar School lads and consequently polite and courteous, and after all I was the son of a schoolmaster, and Ed was the son of a mill owner, we listened attentively as he told us that he had once played in a Cup Final and he too was going to Wembley again. Then he pulled back his jacket and revealed a medal on a chain around the front of the waistcoat and said that he had once played in a Cup Final.

     In truth I just don’t think the penny dropped with us two lads. The callowness of youth I suppose, the indifference of the teenage adolescent years. Had our fathers been there they would no doubt have knelt at the feet of this elderly man but Ed and I just smiled and muttered polite platitudes which today might be translated as “oh yeh.”

     To this day I have felt a deep sense of shame at this missed opportunity to commune with the past, for there in front of us was a living Burnley legend, in the flesh, just the three of us in the carriage all the way to London and I doubt we spoke again. I think back and wonder which of them was still alive and well in 62 – Mosscrop, Nesbit, Freeman? Which one was it? Halley, Boyle or Watson? Ed and I will never know, we never even asked his name, and when we got off the train, this small, frail, slight man disappeared into the smoke and steam until all that was left was a grey moving shape and then that too disappeared just as a ghost might vanish into another world. Was he upset, I wonder, that we had been so indifferent, or did he just think to himself that this is the problem of old age; nobody cares.

     As I write this I still, wonder what he thought of these two disinterested youths who showed only a token fleeting interest in that wonderful medal that hung round his chest.

     London 1962, Gerald (do you know I don’t know of anybody else then or since called Gerald) had a flat that was somewhere in the City near the hospital where he worked. I have a notion it wasn’t too far from the river and I haven’t a clue what we did on the Friday night except talk as two lads would of if Burnley would win or not. How would Jimmy Mac play, would Connelly score a 20 yarder? And I don’t think we slept that much, being on the floor didn’t help.

    The game, a blur really, funnily enough the most significant memory is that of seeing the bloke next to us pee into his beer bottle and then carefully place it by his feet at half time. God forbid somebody found it after the game and thought ‘ah ha liquid refreshment, that looks nice.’ Funny the things we remember. 40 years on I can’t remember a single thing about the game except that we were miles away at one end behind the goals. Now we see snippets of the game on videos and I watch and yes it brings back the hazy memory of Jimmy Robson scoring but bugger all else. Perhaps that’s because we lost and you consign these things to the dustbin bit of memory.

    The evening was spent with Gerald and his girlfriend, a nurse, what else? And in those days there used to be a very well known and illustrious restaurant called Simpson’s. In those days too you could actually park in London and Gerald had a car, don’t forget his father was a millowner, so a car was no problem for Gerald. And thus we went to Simpson’s for our tea. Well no, you call it dinner don’t you but to a cobbled street Tod lad like me we called it tea even if it was as late as 7.30. And this dear reader was my first ever taste of dinner in a plush restaurant. Schoolteacher he might have been but since when has a schoolteacher ever been well paid and dined in fine restaurants. This then was a first sighting of waiters in uniform, with starched aprons, and smug speech and condescending manner. Some of them I’d guess had been there since Edwardian days. This was the first sighting of ranks of cutlery enough in my place alone for three people. And Simpson’s was famous for beef. At Simpson’s you had beef but I can’t remember if we had Yorkshire pudding because in those days the world didn’t stop at Watford, it stopped at Islington and anything further north than that was akin to falling off the edge of the world. Anyway the beef was the easy bit once you’d sorted out the cutlery but prior to tucking in God did I blot my copybook. We had wine, another first, and Gerald being suave and smooth and sophisticated, don’t forget he’d been to Public School, knew exactly what to do but gauche clumsy David did not. A smarmy waiter poured out a tiny taste for Gerald to sample and swig except that I didn’t know that was what happened, so as soon as he had put a quarter of an inch of the stuff in Gerald’s glass, and Gerald hadn’t even had a quick rinse and slurp, David thrusts out his glass and loudly announces bold as brass, “Yes ah’ll ‘ave sum er’ that please.” There was a shocked hush. They all looked at me. I swear the whole bloody restaurant looked. “What,” I said nonplussed, like Peter Kay does in that advert in the Indian restaurant. “What?”

     In the long silence with the waiter shocked and Gerald aghast, I withdrew my glass knowing I had committed some great sin but having no idea what it might be, until Gerald, wine expert extraordinaire, Tod lad made good, he’d also been to Public School I might have told you already, pronounced the stuff acceptable. The waiter filled his glass and I learned my first lesson in fine dining.

     Years later I came across a newspaper piece about the ’62 Cup Final. I was scrolling through three or four years of old Todmorden Advertiser newspapers on microfilm in the library. Suddenly I stopped the machine as I spotted a headline at the top of a column, 1914 FA Cup Veteran. To my astonishment it was all about Billy Nesbit, and that he had been born in Todmorden, something I never knew. At the date of the article he was 70 and there he was pictured with his niece ready to set off for the Cup Final by train. Tickets and hospitality had been provided by the club. Now, retired he divided his time between Todmorden and Blackpool. After football he was a painter and decorator. Still a bachelor, he was still a Burnley fan and he had even been featured on BBC radio in the build-up to the Cup. The ’14 Final was the last to be played at Crystal Palace, the first at which a member of the Royal family, King George V, had presented the medals. He played 99 games for Burnley and was a member of the great side that won the title in 1921. His pay in the early ‘20s was £4 a week.

     “Who scored the winning goal in the Final?” asked the reporter.
     “Bert Freeman off a centre.”
     “Whose centre?”
     “Why, Billy Nesbit’s.”
 Was it little Billy on that train? Maybe it was. I’ll never know.

       So, The Cup Final of 62, Spurs 3 Burnley 1, was memorable but alas for the wrong reasons. I met a Burnley immortal on the train and have no idea who it was and still remember that ghostly shape disappearing into the mist, it was almost eerie, Harry Potter-like and I wonder now if ghost is what it was. And then for an encore I upset the maitre de wine at Simpson’s Restaurant.

    Ed Cockroft and I left school and went our separate ways. Two young lads grew up and grew old, but still love Burnley FC. Ed must have somehow got wind of where I live in Leeds through the books I have writ, because quite out of the blue he phoned a few weeks before Christmas. We talked for an age of this and that, of school, and life and of course the thing that bonded us together then and still does now – the Clarets.
   “I still remember that weekend in London,” I said. “Wasn’t it great?”
   “I’ve often wondered who that old bloke was on the train,” said Ed.
   “Me too,” I replied.
    “Can’t remember much about the game,” he said.
     “Me neither, and by the way how’s Gerald? I asked.
   Ed thought for a moment before replying. “Fraid he died a few years ago, but he never forgot you upsetting the wine waiter at Simpson’s. Can’t remember a bloody thing about the game but I’ve never forgotten you and that wine. Funny the things we remember after all these years.”

Dave Thomas April 2006