Things aren't what they used to be. I'm
talking, of course, about the quality of hardline left-wing newspaper headlines. As our
happy, if slightly hungover, bunch of London Clarets made their way to Turf Moor on a
chilly Sunday morning, we raided the Yorkshire Street newsagents for sustenance that would
take us through the long day without having to spend any money at Ewood.
Suddenly, Firmo spotted something on the shelf and pounced on it as if he
had discovered a rare first edition beer mat from the Church of Moorhouses. It was
something nearly as rare, a copy of the Morning Star, ex-Soviet Union mouthpiece
and organ of the fabulously acronymed CPGB. Now, alas, there's only Cuba and North Korea
to enthuse about, and that doesn't get you very far. Which is probably the reason for the
complete lack of brilliantly one-eyed headlines that alone used to be worth the 35p for
the latest Militant. For example, the best the Morning Star could come up
with was:
"Bus workers back sacked steward"
and that was the front page headline. Compare against my favourite:
"One armed miner attacked by police giant"
which was Militant in its heyday. The Morning Star, with its
adverts for contributions over the phone using your credit card, was a grave
disappointment, and somewhat apt, I felt, as our bus chugged black-smokingly up a hill
with all the style and speed of a Trabant. We were, of course, on our way to football's
temple of greed and avarice.
Lest it be forgotten, remember that it was at Ewood Park that little Bill
Fox fell in love with Mrs T and invited her to become honorary vice-president of Blackburn
Rovers. Which was a thumb in the eye for little Jack Straw, newly elected MP for Blackburn
who called Mrs Thatcher an evil woman. Oh dear! I had the misfortune to live in Blackburn
throughout the eighties, and never once did our MP show the slightest bit of interest or
affection for his constituency's impoverished football club. But how quickly things can
change – all that is solid melts into air – as a good friend o' mine put
it. Suddenly, Jack Straw is the biggest bloody football fan going, bathing in his town's
purchase of the Premiership title like a good free market disciple.
You see, it's all fake. Straw's latter-day devotions, the three-sided
stadium, the arriviste fans... it’s a puffball of a set-up, inflated only by the
continual pumping in of hard cash from a deceased man's moribund manufacturing empire.
Take comfort, dear reader, in the knowledge that one day we will have back the Blackburn
Rovers we used to hate far less: small but well organised and well managed, a team that
was always more than the sum of its parts, always gutsy and committed.
Which brings us to Stan Ternent's Burnley. Look, I've waffled on for ages,
and though I didn't want to talk about football I'm going to have to. Just for a minute.
Towards the end of a shamefully one-sided second half, with their team
five goals to the good and threatening to score with every attack, the Blackburn fans
sang, with an air of disbelief and joy, "We've beaten the Bastards 5-0". And, in
a way, I derived a flake of comfort from this. They had perceived us to be a threat. They
expected this result even less than us.
As we've come to expect, officialdom can provide us with a few excuses.
The linesmen looked inept and uncertain, yet the one running the line to our left got one
split-second decision right that probably cost the Clarets their one chance to get back
into the game. With a few minutes remaining in the first half, a penetrative cross from
the left was met by Taylor with a powerful header that Friedel could only parry straight
into the path of the oncoming Moore. He tucked away the rebound, but the flag was up for
offside. At half-time, the disallowed goal was replayed over the monitors and Moore was
indeed fractionally offside when Taylor made the original header. It could be called good
judgement if it weren't for the fact that Blackburn's fifth was more clearly offside but
was allowed to stand.
But the Clarets were struggling terribly by the time Moore was denied,
thanks in no small part to some chronic defending. It's not often that our defensive
heroes come in for pointed criticism, but there's nothing else to say after an opening 20
minutes of confusion in the Burnley rearguard that left us chasing the game.
Weller and Branch were pushed up in an attacking formation that might have
got somewhere if we'd got hold of the ball and passed it. As it was, Blackburn hogged
possession, found acres of space down the flanks and generated such a head of steam that
goals looked inevitable. That they arrived thanks to a couple of deflections is neither
here nor there.
This is difficult to write, but we didn't compete and looked yards slower
in virtually every position. Call it what you will – a bad day at the office, highly
paid Premiership players against Nationwide toilers – but defeat was on the cards
from the opening phase of the match and it didn't get any better. Jansen had a field day
in the second half and added two with excellent finishes both times. There was a queue of
Blackburn forwards at the back post for the fifth. Want me to go on?
Thought not.
