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Burnley 1 Fulham 0, 1st May 1999
Firmo
Thirty-seven
minutes into the second half, a ball played into a crowded penalty area after a brief
session of head tennis found its way to Ronnie Jepson, with his back to goal. He spun away
from his manhandling marker and turned and shot in one movement, sweeping the ball into
the corner of the net with faultless accuracy. And that was that.
After the game, it was hard to recall what all
the fuss had been about. About two months earlier, hadn’t we been convinced that that
was that and we were doomed? After the twin horrors of Gillingham and Man City,
weren’t the only questions worth discussing those of when, rather than whether we
would go down, and who should take over? Yet, ever since Macclesfield didn’t go 3-0
up, we’d had the kind of run that had made survival an expectation instead of a vain
hope, a fact to be confirmed mathematically by this result in place of the impossible
dream it once seemed.
People like me have to admit we got it wrong.
Back in March we were saying our only chance of survival was to get rid now and bring in a
firefighter who just might, with a fair wind and the rub of the green, keep us up by the
skin of our teeth. History will record that we didn’t get rid. We stuck with Ternent.
We stopped up. If we had changed our manager, no one will ever know if it might have gone
the same way. But what we can say is that if a new man had come in and pulled off this
same run, we would have hailed him as a messiah and wetted our lips in anticipation of
next season. So, while I still have doubts, Ternent bought himself another life with this
run. He at least deserves the chance to make signings in the summer and start the season.
So, apart from the fact that we won 1-0 and
stopped up, what was the game like? You mean that isn’t enough? Okay, it was the
exact opposite of our pre-Christmas match at Fulham. There, a punch drunk and stupid
Burnley side bereft of either creative ideas or fight had let themselves be battered by
the opposition, whipping boys without the intelligence to respond or the bottle to fight
back. This was as different as could be imagined. We competed for everything. Every loose
ball was there to be snapped at. On a warm day, and with their season over, Fulham
couldn't match our will to win.
We almost had a dream start. With a minute or so
gone, Steve Davis headed the ball in from a free kick. Seconds of joy passed before we
realised it hadn’t been given. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it at the
time. Later, the irritating sods who never allow themselves to be carried away because
they’re more interested in being right would tell me that it was fractionally
offside. But of course, Burnley players are never offside. That’s strictly for the
opposition.
We added that little extra fuel to our simmering
sense of injustice, then continued with the task of unsettling the opposition. I think
it’s fair to say that our priority was not to concede an early goal. Fulham,
meanwhile, not realising that things had changed since December, seemed to think theirs
would come without any effort.
They didn't even try. At each challenge their
players collapsed as though struck by act of god. This is not to say that our aggression
did not occasionally cross the line, but even at our most terrier like we are not exactly
a hard side. As Fulham fell about and their pampered players sought the refuge of the
overworked stretcher, I found myself wondering what it must have been like when they
played some mad side like Wycombe.
True, there was one bad challenge by Branch, who
stretched a little too far for a ball that wasn’t his, and picked up a yellow for his
trouble. But this was Graham Branch: hardly a midfield enforcer. In any case, it took that
to make us notice he was playing. With Payton predictably failing a fitness test, we
played with only Cooke up front, and Little and Branch breaking from midfield.
Unsurprisingly, it never worked for Branch, and again he gave way at half time, Jepson
joining Cooke to add muscle to the attack. Fortunately, Little was again in the mood to
cause some damage. He ran at them and made them panic.
They employed a fairly straightforward man
marking system whenever we encroached in their box. Each of their lads grabbed hold of one
of ours and held him back. Unsurprisingly, this worked. Time and again they fouled us, and
a foul in the penalty area means a penalty, right? Only if the ref chooses to see them,
sadly.
In truth, the first half wasn’t exactly
incident packed, but then, it was satisfying enough. After some of the displays this
season, we enjoy watching hard work. And the crowd was as up for it as ever. Against us
was a simply feeble smattering of support from the alleged champions. Before he started
saying nice things about Burnley being what football’s all about, I recall Keegan
claiming that one of the reasons Fulham get poor crowds is that the quality of the
opposition - like Gillingham, Burnley - isn’t enticing enough. Presumably that was
why so few of them bothered to make the trip to Turf Moor compared with our ever loyal
following. We busied ourselves with pointing out to the Fulham fans where their manager
was off to and reminding Chris Coleman where he came from, and what he will always be.
Meanwhile, the ref continued to look over his
shoulder at the visitors bench every time he gave a decision, as if to say, "Is that
all right, Kev?" Perhaps he was hoping for a brown envelope under the dressing room
door come full time.
The second half progressed in its odd and
scrappy way. Every time a Fulham player fell down he was substituted. They would lie on
the ground, the stretcher would come on, and they would play no more. Four players went
this way. It was hard to believe they were all seriously injured. I suspect they just
didn’t fancy it. Keegan went along with it. Perhaps he’d misunderstood all those
patronising ‘from Budapest to Burnley’ references, and thought he could blood a
few young players at half time. Yet the fourth time the stretcher came on they’d used
up all the subs, and they were down to ten men.
This was our chance. Unfortunately the lame
Johnrose had replaced Pickering and he saw too much of the ball and wasted it too often to
help our chances. We had one good chance before Jepson finished it, Cooke missing his by
now obligatory once a match sitter when clean through and with the goalie beaten. He shot
wide. Fortunately, Jepson’s application for entry into the Burnley hall of fame
followed swiftly on its heels.
If he didn’t want to be bothered with
fouls, one thing the ref definitely was interested in was stoppage time. Lots of it. At
the end of both halves I looked at my watch with mounting disbelief, expecting him to
blow, but our enthusiastic ref insisted we play ever on. Perhaps it was his last game of
the season and he wanted to savour it. Perhaps he’d bought new boots and wanted to
break them in. Whatever, we played and played. We played until past five to four in the
first half. The second half finished around five past five (I though about our daytripping
friends, who must have to dash madly and uncertainly up to Manchester Road for the 5.21
train, and gave thanks I was weekending). There came a point, after Jepson’s goal,
when it seemed as though we would play until Fulham had equalised. Turn the floodlights
on, let’s play all night!
Although the first thing I thought when Jepson
scored was that we’d be unlucky not to get a point, and that was a good result
against the champions, I couldn’t see them scoring. And of course, we’d all love
it, just love it, if we beat them. They were tired, uninterested and, after Symons was
rightly dismissed for a professional foul on the clear running Cooke at the start of
stoppage time, down to nine men. They had one ballsed up chance of a late header, missed
much to Jepson’s amusement. He communicated his pleasure at the miss to the
surrounding Fulham players. Crowd favourite status was confirmed.
We hung on. The stewards did their usual half
hearted thing of trying not too hard to stop a pitch invasion. Ever the coward, I waited
until enough people had made the run before I sauntered on, had a last look around and
took a few photos of the emptying stands. As is now customary, we went and sat in the dug
out for a contemplative moment, before emerging to look for fag burns in the technical
area. There was the usual sadness of the last home game of the season. That was it until
August.
This didn’t compare in drama, excitement,
tension or attendance to last year’s last ditch escape against Plymouth, although
that is of course a measure of the achievement of Ternent and his squad in the preceding
games. I didn’t feel obliged to bomb around madly and ecstatically. Of course, at
this stage I didn’t realise we were mathematically safe. I didn’t know the other
results were favourable. I just knew we didn’t deserve to go down any more. We got
out of this mess by our own efforts. In the end, we didn’t need other results.
I finished reports of Wrexham
away in 96 and Plymouth at home in 98 by saying that, for all
our ultimate rejoicing at survival, these had been terrible seasons which should not be
allowed to happen again. I won’t waste breath repeating it this time. The hard fact
is that three out of the last four seasons have been campaigns against relegation. I want
to believe that this time will be different from all the others. I really do. An excellent
Burnley support compared to a paltry following from Fulham shows that the potential is
there to play on a much higher stage. For how long will that potential be unrealised?
But for now, I’m looking forward to the
summer. And, for the rest of the season, I’m enjoying looking at the tables.
Particularly the bottom of the Premier League.
Team: Crichton, Pickering (Johnrose
51), Cowan, Mellon, Davis, Brass, Little, Cook, Cooke), Branch (Jepson 46), Armstrong.
SNU: Reid.
Tim Quelch's
report and the very different away game
