Oatcakes and ale
Stoke 1 Burnley 4, 24th April 1999
Tim Quelch
There was nothing bulimic about this
binge. No guilt here, no recriminations either. Just a bloody fine blow out. But in the
boozy post match haze, it’s easy to say this. All the anguish is filtered out. For in
truth this was no breeze. Until Glen Little expelled our worries, Stoke threatened to
destroy us. Our early two goal lead only provoked a massive retaliation. We were
incredibly fortunate to survive. Especially when Stoke turned the screw either side of
half time. As if we didn’t know this already, winners get all the breaks. Incredibly,
Burnley have clawed their way into this exclusive company. For how long, we wonder.
Conversely, Stoke seemed to have been shown the door.
In this game both sides gave everything.
Passion, commitment and good helpings of skill, too. But when the force is with you,
it’s unstoppable. Stoke know this. In the early months of this season, they carried
all before them, irrespective of how well they played. But once the momentum was lost
there was no investment to regain it. So since December they’ve been in free fall. It
was strangely comforting to read of Stoke’s woes after we thought we had monopolised
footballing disasters.
The afternoon started wonderfully. After just
five minutes, Pickering scored my Burnley goal of the season. Cook’s free kick on the
left was headed out by Mohan, but only as far as Pickering, 25 yards from goal. Without
hesitation our full back volleyed the ball back at blistering speed. It dipped at the
optimum moment, bulging the top right corner of the net and rendering Muggleton’s
acrobatics totally irrelevant. Before the game, Pickering claimed he held no bitterness
about his exclusion at Stoke. His post goal celebrations suggested otherwise. Running
towards the main stand he shook his fist, hissing defiance at his former detractors.
Sometimes the rejection is almost worthwhile, if you’re allowed just one sweet moment
of vindication like this.
The trouble with brilliant starts, hope
threatens to turn into expectation. Your pessimism issues the usual warnings. But you
begin to ignore them. You start groping for those three points. You start thinking about
what they will secure. So, when Payton, in acres of space, knocked in Cowan’s quick
through ball after just eleven minutes, you’re ready to ready to grind out the
vestiges of doubt with your fag butt. After all, Burnley had all the early play. Both full
backs were providing flank power. Cook was curling dangerous balls into the channels.
Little was running at Stoke’s stretched defenders, bewildering them by switching from
one wing to the other. Cooke was prominent as a target man and Payton was finding space
around him. Burnley’s defenders were pushing up. Meanwhile, Stoke seemed to be error
prone. Payton’s goal was set up by a poor clearance by Sigurdsson, which Cowan
skilfully intercepted. Then you remember all those dreadful defensive cock-ups. You
don’t dispose of doubt. Instead you yearn for insurance. ‘Just one more lads and
this could be party time!’
But just as your better judgement predicted, the
game then turned. Payton went off immediately after scoring. The troublesome thigh strain
hadn’t cleared up. Whether it was coincidental or not, Burnley then became less
menacing on the break and Stoke began to gain good possession, making their extra
midfielder pay. Their manager, Brian Little, had been criticised by the dwindling Stokies
for his defensive tactics. His response today was to play 4-4-2 with a midfielder, Phil
Robinson at full back and two widemen, Keen and Wallace, who started to provide a series
of dangerous crosses. Thorne and Crowe both wasted good heading chances from their
service. Kavanagh and Oldfield also began to thread some sharp balls through
Burnley’s retreating back line, setting up fair shooting opportunities for Crowe and
Wallace. Burnley’s defence now came under constant pressure and their clearances were
being returned with interest. Burnley couldn’t seem to hold the ball up. Cooke was
making more and more hopeless runs. The midfield seemed over-run. Branch, Payton’s
replacement, found it hard to make an impact. Little seemed to be fading and Burnley had
difficulty in putting together more than a couple of passes. However, Branch did have one
excellent opportunity to puncture Stoke’s resistance. Having been put clear on the
right by Cook, Branch was in on Muggleton but Mohan made a saving tackle just as Branch
was about to shoot. Thereupon the siege resumed.
Eventually, Burnley were undone. In the 31st
minute, Cowan fouled Crowe on the edge of the box. This decision was hotly disputed by the
booked Cowan and the large Burnley crowd. To no avail. Kavanagh powered in the resulting
free kick low and hard. It ricocheted off the wall and the heads of two Stoke players
before finding the roof of the net off Brass’s despairing boot. Crowe was credited as
the unwitting goal scorer.
From then until halftime, Burnley’s game
plan was to hang on. They managed to do this, just, but few of us had illusions over what
we were about to receive after the interval.
Unsurprisingly, Stan substituted Branch,
bringing on Johnrose to bolster his beleaguered midfield. Not that this made much
difference. After a quiet opening ten minutes, Stoke suddenly turned up the heat. Burnley
were forced to defend with increasing desperation. Their goalmouth heaved with lunging
bodies. Crichton frantically punched at crosses. Davis, Brass and Armstrong were forced to
hack at loose balls, more often than not skewing their last ditch clearances, and
providing only the briefest moments of relief. In this melee, it was inevitable that the
ball would eventually run for Stoke. Fortunately, they were meticulous dentists when it
came to gift horses. Hesitant and lacking confidence, some of their misses from point
blank range were beyond belief. As jittery as Crichton appeared in the face of this
bombardment, he made one splendid save, when he turned a drive by Kavanagh against the
post.
Had Stoke scored during this period of total
domination, I’m sure they would have gone on to win. They didn’t. And soon they
were made to suffer an incident of outrageous misfortune. It came in the 68th
minute. Little chased a clearance from Pickering up the right wing. His route was blocked
by Sigurdsson, whose sliding tackle had seemed to put the ball out of play, by a good six
inches. Although Little recovered the ball from the prone defender, it had seemed too
late. Little hesitated expecting the referee to award a throw in. All the other Stoke
defenders had stopped, too. However the linesman didn’t flag and the referee waved
play on. Much to his amazement, Little was allowed to dribble into the area. He tried to
put Cooke through but Mohan intercepted his square pass. Luckily, Little was able to seize
on the loose ball and round the unbalanced central defender and Muggleton before poking
home.
Even then Stoke weren’t completely out of
it. Had Crowe not blazed over less than ten yards from an open goal, Burnley’s final
moments could have been quite dicey. Instead, the Clarets were able to make more and more
incursions into Stoke’s area, helped by City’s incautious attacking. Cooke
should have scored when put through one-on-one with Muggleton, but the Stoke keeper saved
with his legs. Mellon should have done better, too, when given a free shot at goal inside
the Stoke box. But it was left to Glen Little to cap a masterly performance, with a last
minute curler. Having picked up a header from Johnrose on the left flank, Little again
skinned Mohan before clipping the ball sweetly past Muggleton’s left hand and just
inside the far post. Little stood in front of us with one hand cupped to his ear. The
noise from our celebrations was, of course, quite deafening.
In this parallel universe, I soared home along
the M6, buoyant with euphoria and stoked by pulsating rock. It was only as I stepped out
of the car two hours later that I crossed back through that membrane that separates my two
worlds, to be greeted with Liz’s words, ‘Lost again, then?’ I’m sure
she’ll reveal all sometime soon. For now I just want to hold onto what I thought I
saw on a sunny, spring day in the Potteries.
Team: Crichton,
Pickering, Cowan, Mellon, Davis, Brass, King Glen, Cook (Jepson 85), Cooke, Andy Payton
OBE (Branch 11) (Johnrose 46).
Firmo's report
