Relegation dogfight
Burnley 4 Macclesfield 3, 28th March 1999
Firmo
Here was the whole season in a
nutshell.
I didn’t have exactly high hopes at the
start of the game, knowing that this was one we really must try to win, or at the very
least, not lose. Macclesfield were amid one of those fighting revivals that sides which
eventually get relegated often put in. And us? Well, we’d scraped a narrow defeat and
a battling point, which was a recovery of sorts after the twin horrors of Gillingham and
Man City. We hadn’t won at home since November, and we hadn’t even scored at the
place for more than a month.
While we're talking about negative runs, I
hadn’t visited Turf Moor since the Christmas holidays. My absences can be taken as a
sign of our failure. Of course, I’d been busy with away games and trying to have a
life in the gaps in between, but those are excuses; if we’d been successful I’d
have been busting a gut to get up there and see us. My last home game had therefore seen
the inspirational return of the prodigal son Steve Davis, when we’d been damned
unlucky not to beat a side right up the top of the league. Now the circumstances were
different. And now I was going to pack some games in. Just as success draws you to games
you would normally miss, so failure has its own remorseless logic. We are the club whose
directors described the end of last season as ‘exciting’ in our annual report.
At this stage of the season when there’s survival at stake, you find yourself going
to games you wouldn’t normally consider. I usually choose games for social reasons,
according to what makes a good day out and what fits my calendar. But at these times, all
such thoughts go out of the window. I felt like my team needed me. Being a veteran of the
pitch invasion at York in 92 when we were sprung from the depths, I either wanted to
either be there when we returned, or watch us pull off another great escape.
For much of the previous week I ummed and ahhed
about this game. It had of course been moved to Sunday, in part thanks to the crass
decision to schedule an England match at 3.00 on a Saturday and stuff everyone else, and
in part due to our club’s characteristically ham-fisted reaction to that timing. If
we had to move the match, why not to earlier that Saturday, or 3 o’clock that Sunday,
as other clubs did? No one else kicked off at one on Sunday. Personally, I would have
preferred that we stick to the original time, three on Saturday, and give England some
competition and the local public some choice. Not everyone’s that bothered about
England anyway. But the decision had been taken, and that timing was a headache. For
public transport north to Burnley on a Sunday, all bets are off. Nothing reaches there by
one. The day's first train doesn’t even get to Preston until after then. (Train
companies take the view that no one ever wants to travel on the one day of the week when
most people don’t work.) So, it could only be a car job, and on Friday I said yes to
a lift.
That Sunday morning the clocks went back. You
lose an hour’s sleep. Big deal, for on Sunday morning you can simply roll over and
steal it from the afternoon. Unfortunately for me, it was a 5.30 alarm. The cab was booked
for 6.00 to take me south to the station (no tubes before 7.00, this is Sunday) to catch a
train to grab my lift. I reckoned a 6.00 cab might come for 6.30. It of course arrived
precisely on time. After a short ride down the spookily empty Seven Sisters Road, which
normally thunders with traffic, I was dumped on the cold steps of St Pancras station by
6.30. The train was fifty minutes off. Nowhere was bloody open. Not even McDonald’s.
Knock an hour off all these times for the time my body thought it was.
That’s how it started, and after that I
suppose it had to get better. I made the rendezvous in anonymous home counties commuter
belt, and just after eight o’clock we were rolling north. Around seven hours later we
sat stupefied at the top of the Longside and watched our side go two goals down.
There we were, playing five at the back at home
against a side below us, two goals behind with thirteen minutes gone. I was forced to
contemplate a debut application of the Three Goals Rule on home Turf, speculating on
whether I could leave and where the hell I could go, as my driver would surely want to
stay and we were parked right next to Turf Moor. I was also wondering if the season had
ended here. I suppose a calmer man might have comforted himself that there was still
plenty of time to haul it back to something like respectability, but it didn’t seem
like a good time to be calm. As the crowd, with some justification, started to turn on the
players, who continued to blunder, I remember thinking, they’ll say we got on their
backs, and that was why they played crap, and it wouldn't have been fair, because they
started playing crap before we started drawing attention to it. We’d really tried to
get behind them, but this was rubbish.
And the way we were playing, what was to stop
Macclesfield grabbing the decisive third? The two goals we’d allowed them to score
were absolute gifts. They scored two crap goals.
The first was the fault of Cowan, strongly
supported up by Crichton. An innocuous long ball - one of many - saw Cowan try to charge
and head it, but he misjudged it badly, and it skidded the wrong way off his bonce into
the path of one of their players. Even then, if Crichton hadn’t ambled off his line,
it still might not have been serious, but as it was, their lad was left with an easy lob.
It flew at no significant pace into a net left empty. Good finish? Yeah, I guess, but
utterly lousy defending by us had allowed them the opening.
Their second was a real team effort. By us. The
defence failed collectively this time. You’d have thought five would be enough. It
only needed one to make a challenge to disrupt the attack. Instead they stood as Macc
threaded a move around them with no effort at all. The result was a ball played out wide
for a cross that wasn’t cleared which left an easy finish into an unguarded net with
Crichton sprawling.
Cue the boos. This was awful. And worse, I was
sober, having not made the pub ‘til after twelve for a concentrated half hour of two
and a half pints. Yet, before I’d had time to work out precisely which pub I would
hit, we were back in it. We knocked a ball into Macc’s box which they didn’t
clear (get your own tricks, you unoriginal bastards) and Little reacted quickest, stuck
out a foot and it just about crept in. Little thereby doubled his goal tally for the
season. Both against Macclesfield.
We took some heart from this, and redirected our
expectations towards a draw. Trouble was, we were still playing badly. It was as though
both sides were staging a 'who can play worse' competition. Branch was perhaps our worst
culprit, enjoying the latest in a long line of ineffectual games. It would be said later
that the crowd was destroying his confidence, but again, he had to be hopeless before we
could react to it. It's frustrating, because there are times when he shows glimpses of
real skill, and of course he has the pace, but he is, I'm afraid, something of a bottler.
He is the very last man you would want to find in a one on one situation, as he proved
when put through with only the goalie to beat. He steadied himself, took aim, took another
touch, took his time, and passed meekly into the keeper's grateful arms. The goalie was
their worse player. He had all the ability of Frank Petter Kval with none of the
exoticism. (Unusually, Crichton was the second worst keeper on the pitch.) He looked
vulnerable to almost any ball, and we really didn’t test him as much as we should
have. While we created chances, our approach play remained poor. But then, the overall
standard of this game was appalling. While afterwards it would be remembered as an
exciting game of football, it was a technically terrible match. This was truly a Sunday
football match.
Still, by half time our boos had turned to
cheers as we had at least lifted ourselves from the gutter and had rallied our spirits
from rock bottom. With the five at the back quietly changed to four, we anticipated an
equaliser.
Cue something even more dreadful than the 45
minutes before. Yes, those bloody dogs. Timing has never been our club's strongest point.
So it was that in the week we started pounding Serbia, we were treated to a half time dog
parade with a military theme. Bored dogs trouped round dressed in coats bearing military
badges, led by saluting girls. The last dog was in camouflage - though clearly not
adequate, as we could still see it - and the girl leading it was trying to hide her face
with her salute.
What would the second half bring? Had the
Clarets gone to the dogs? Would the end see Ternent hounded out of Turf Moor? Would the
team leave the pitch with their tails between their legs? Or could we claw back this game
with a terrier like performance? Everyone knows our pedigree, it's true that we don't win
a lot. There was still every chance we might cocker this one up. After all, we were
completely shitzu to start with. I suppose much might depend on how many times we got the
ball crossed rover, whether the ref pointed to the spot or if we enjoyed one of our better
patches. Would this game pointer the way for the rest of the season? Would
Macclesfield’s dogged persistence be too much to break down? In which case I'd be
bound to end up losing my distemper. Or, paws for thought: would we start the half with a
springer in our heels? Or could it be that I was barking up completely the wrong tree?
As it happened, the second half was equally mad.
The equaliser duly came, but from a most unexpected source. In a moment that crowned
Cowan's barmy afternoon, our leftback produced a perfect overhead bicycle kick to finish a
ball played into the box. It came from nowhere. He leapt, flipped, and the ball was in the
net. There was a split second of stunned reaction before we rose from our seats to applaud
an act of genius. I can't ever remember seeing a Burnley striker score a goal like that,
and now here was our fullback doing it. I can't imagine Steve Morgan pulling it off
either.
No need to worry about your goal of the season
anymore. The celebrations were correspondingly spectacular; Cowan dived towards the Bob
Lord, kicking the air in imitation of his strike as he touched down.
He had an interesting afternoon. Attempting to
make up for their first, he'd proceeded to throw himself all around the pitch and try to
win every ball. For free kicks he made late runs into the box, arriving unanticipated and
unmarked, and winning headers. His first had been feeble, and I was still wondering aloud
what was the point of doing that when his next header missed by inches. I hope it was
tactical, rather than a personal act of atonement by a player who wears his heart on his
sleeve. He's a bit of a character, which makes it surprising Ternent signed him. When Macc
were wasting time for a point one of their players took an age to leave the pitch to be
subbed. Cowan ran alongside him, lending encouragement to pick his legs up, then running
in front to make an example. On the evidence of this game, he impressed me as a fantastic
attacking fullback, if not one particularly good at defending.
His crazy goal scored, we now knew we could win
it. Therefore , five minutes later, we promptly found a third foot in which to shoot
ourselves. This one was pure Crichton. A poorly executed header looped goalwards. Crichton
stood casually still as he watched it surely go over, thinking perhaps of the goal kick he
would take. But the header hit the bar, and with Crichton apparently having grown roots,
the rebound was easily tucked away. It was a crass and stupid goal to concede, and
suddenly Macc were happy to defend, their excellent following found their voices again,
and we had set ourselves another lot of work to do.
Johnrose and Jepson replaced Armstrong and
Branch, not before time, and the team gradually started looking like more of an attacking
force, despite Cook's somewhat hot and cold display in the centre of the pitch. The best
thing in our favour was that Andy Payton was working immensely hard up front. If anyone
deserved a goal it was him.
Fifteen minutes later, predictable Clarets
pressure resulted in his offside goal. The ball came to Payton from a rebound, which meant
that ref and linesman were looking the wrong way, and missed the obvious offside. Payton,
in miles of space, coolly placed a textbook lob over the head of the advancing keeper. It
was a goal with a touch of luck about it, but the finish was classy.
Anyhow, we were due some luck, because they had
the luck and the ref when we played them away. That day their goalie had cheated to get
Cooke booked and Sodje had dived to make it red. This was for a game which should never
have kicked off on an unplayable pitch. Cooke was out for this game, depriving us of a
physical battle with Sodje which would have been enjoyable. Sodje, by the way, played how
you'd expect, cementing his reputation with the Burnley faithful as half cheat, half
donkey.
Macc attempted to sit back and take the point.
They nearly got it. We had a hatful of chances that went everywhere but in. With time
running out and frantic Clarets urging the team on, we won a corner. Mellon took it.
Whatever his faults may be, he can certainly take a corner, and there hasn't been many
Burnley players you could say that about. In it swung, and Davis met it to head down and
in. You can imagine the wild celebrations. No one was more relieved than Johnrose, who
seconds earlier had missed an absolute sitter, impossibly heading wide. Davis must have
been fairly relieved himself. He'd had an unusually poor game by his standards, having
been unable to get his passing right all afternoon. I guess the jitters have affected even
him.
All the Burnley bench were on the pitch. It was
good to see it seemed to matter as much to them as us. (Jepson's introduction to the play
on 68 minutes had merely formalised his status; he'd been on the pitch after every goal.)
Sam Ellis, after the celebrations, made clear to one and all that we must now hold this.
Interesting to see how Ternent has taken a back seat to him in recent weeks.
We held on for the last couple of minutes.
Ternent and McIlroy added to the cabaret by indulging in a pointing and name calling
session near the tunnel. Apparently Ternent called Macclesfield a pub team. Fair enough,
but so are we. This was a fantastic result from a terrible game.
In the car back, Radio 5 described the defending
as 'woeful' and added, for the sake of emphasis, that neither side could defend to save
their lives. As everyone said, it might have finished 8-7, but we would always have
deserved to score the eight. We had so many chances this report could be twice as long
(I'll spare you), and although our defence was worse than theirs, our attack was better.
Attacking's more important than defending after all, isn't it?
Oddly, this wasn't even the first time we've won
4-3 this season, and although Davis then too scored from a Mellon corner, the
circumstances at Bristol were somewhat different. This was the first home win since
November. First home goal since mid February. First Turf visit since New Year. And now
I'll be back, of course, for every remaining home game this season, because it might not
be over yet.
Team: Crichton,
Pickering (Williamson 73), Cowan, Mellon, Davis, Brass, Little, Armstrong (Jepson 68),
Cook, Payton, Branch (Johnrose 55).
The away game
