Whatever you do, take pride
Derby County 0 Burnley 1, 11 December 1999
Firmo
A few minutes from the end of this momentous
game, Steve Davis turned round, looked up, and calmly rolled a backpass back to Paul
Crichton. A few days earlier, over a couple of swift lunchtime halves with Clarets supremo
Barry Kilby, we had joked that, with the financial benefits of a replay obvious, if we
were winning 1-0 and time was running out, Davis would have to score an own goal. For the
record, Crichton calmly dealt with it and played it away. This win could set us up for the
rest of the season. Besides, we played so well here that we could fancy our chances of
getting through to Round Five.
But how could I possibly begin to describe this
day? Most time spent supporting a lower division club is miserable or dull, but there are
days where all is redeemed, moments of clarity when everything bad that Burnley have given
us seems to make sense, to be the ideal preparation for ecstasy, joy and jubilation. There
are times when I know that I support the best football club in the world. This day at
Derby was one of them.
A perfect day? Damn near it. So the train turned
us up late in the real ale capital of England, but some swift drinking and judicious short
cutting restored our schedule. I love the pubs of Derby, whose modest exteriors do not do
justice to the interior temples dedicated to the worship of beer, basic drinking halls
with bewildering choice of booze provided as routine. Six pints in six pubs were had,
Santa suits all over the shop, and we took it as an omen that the last establishment
stocked Moorhouse's Black Cat Mild, especially imported for the occasion from Burnley.
We made the ground, the usual nice from the
outside, bit dull on the inside affair, ejected some interlopers from our seats in the
London Clarets block booking, and settled in to the splendidly unreasonable rhythms of an
utterly biased away crowd. I love it when Burnley fans are like this: noisy, one eyed,
contemptuous of the opposition, disdainful of the home support, completely behind our lads
on the pitch. This was Wigan with knobs on. Even better, for
the young kids who've grown tired of listening to our tales of glorious failure at Derby in 92, this day wrote a new chapter to supersede it. This
time, our glorious support was matched by a team out on the pitch who could do the
business.
Were we equal to Derby? We were better than
them! In every respect, we were their masters. A casual passer-by, not that such a species
should be encouraged in football, might if pressed have guessed wrongly which side was
which. We were better than them. We were more committed than them. Sure, that you expect.
But we played better football than them. We were more composed than them. We were smarter
than them. The best team won.
From the start we could draw encouragement from
Burnley's performance. This wasn't the breathless and ultimately doomed to fail up and at
'em approach you might expect from the lower division team. Naturally, we worked hard, we
attacked quickly and incisively, but what impressed me more than anything was how we kept
our composure, how the side maintained their shape and played their game.
Cynics, for whom we have no call at the moment,
might make the point that Derby are a flawed and desperate team, and as such were there
for the taking. They were, but we still had to take them. Their lack of fight,
particularly once behind, was sad and perplexing, but we still had to beat them. Burnley
have played teams which looked ripe for plucking in the past, but have failed to make the
most of it. We've also played sides playing crap and sunk down to their level, as at Reading. Regardless of Derby's manifest failings, we still had to
be bloody good to pull this off.
Early attacks set the tone for what was to come.
Micky Mellon, who it needs to be recorded was aggressive and determined and always
involved, ran at the centre of their defence and unleashed a good shot just wide into the
side netting. Dean West, a transformed player (can there be two Dean Wests?) banged one
not a million miles over the cross bar from Payton's cross. So it went on. Burnley
combined neat approach play with a willingness to blast the ball towards safety whenever
it came near our defence.
It really is unfair to pick out any single
Burnley player for individual praise, as without exception our boys were brilliant, each
playing their part in a superlative team performance. That said, we are known for not
being fair, so special praise is due to Mitchell Thomas. It's possible he feasts by
midnight on the blood of virgins, so astonishing is his rejuvenation in the Claret
colours. A new lease of life hardly covers it. Thomas has been reborn since we signed him,
a colossus hell bent on stopping any opposing player getting anywhere near the ball. On
the rare occasions Derby threatened, prompted usually by the intelligent play of their on
loan Israeli and never by the asthmatic wheezings of clapped-out Kinkladze, it was
generally Thomas who was there to hammer it clear. His positional sense and anticipation
mean that he rarely has to do anything last ditch. He was faultless.
When once or twice they came close enough to
hazard a shot, Crichton was mighty. Is this the same nervous flapper of last season? A
couple of times he dived at short range to parry the shot. It's his job. He did it well.
Davis was solid, reigning in his usual tendency
to charge forward for the good of the cause. Armstrong looked good too, pushing up in
support of Little on the left and belting in crosses. Actually, that's faint praise. Give
him his due, Armstrong was splendid. Little was self-contained, playing for the team.
Every inch the new Ted McMinn, he showed lots of the ball skill and ability to run at
players we expect, but also got back and tried to defend, even made a couple of tackles,
and passed the ball if it made sense to do so. He was sensible, professional, a team
player. He could even have scored, getting in a good forceful header, of all things,
shortly before half time.
Mullin struggled a bit to get involved on the
right, but still looked capable of causing danger around the edge of the box. Cook was
quietly effective, working well in harness with Mellon and dropping back when other
players went on runs. Up front, Payton put in a lot of hard work and made himself a
nuisance for the Derby defenders. An audacious attempted chip reminded us that he has the
skill as well. Andy Cooke, playing in the first game this season when the referee actually
gave some decisions his way rather than invite defenders to foul him as they see fit,
revelled in the responsibility of his role. He was always running, always up for it,
always there.
Those were the eleven players on the pitch. They
were excellent. We had about 5,000 more team members in the stand behind the goal. From
first to last we were committed, proud, defiant: anything but quiet. This was a game to
emerge from hoarse. Burnley roared their team on. Derby fans sat meekly and watched. The
noise we created was deafening. A couple of people in the home stand said we looked
fantastic, a jumping, shouting, chanting jumble of Claret and Blue enlivened with odd
pockets of Santa suits. I feel we are entitled to claim a slice of the victory.
Our winner was a simple goal. It was long
overdue when it came, shortly after the hour. Seconds before, Derby had underlined their
ineptitude by making a double substitution, unfortunately removing the passenger
Kinkladze, but introducing the gloriously incompetent Mikkel Beck to the game. Little ran
with the ball on the left and took it to the edge of the penalty area. He then rolled it
back to Armstrong behind him, and Armstrong dropped a peach of a cross into the box, where
Andy Cooke rose first and highest to head it down. If bounced just in front of and over a
scrambling keeper before coming to rest gently in the bottom right hand corner of the net.
Capitalising on their confusion as they sought to integrate the two subs, our deserved
goal had been scored.
Truth be told, it looked a soft goal from our
distant viewpoint at the other end of the ground. It took an age to go in, and on tv
replays you have to fault their goalkeeper, but it was just reward for our superiority.
Also on the plus side, it arose from good build up play, Armstrong's cross was excellent,
and a photograph from one Sunday paper shows Cooke rising at least a foot above his
defender, frozen forever in mid air as the sole Claret in a clutch of Derby players. That
photo is a perfect metaphor for our superiority in every respect. We jumped higher,
tackled with greater determination, ran faster, and passed better. We were, quite
literally in this instance, head and shoulders above Derby.
You probably know that the crowd went mad.
Anything before this had been merely a warm up. 5,000 jumped up and down and roared as
loud as lungs would allow a chant of praise for Andy Cooke. As we landed, I swear I felt
the stand shake. If I was Andy Cooke, I'd feel that once I'd had the satisfaction of 5,000
people singing my name unequivocally and unhesitatingly, I could die pretty happy.
After a couple of minutes of this, I realised
that I was forgetting to breathe. I collapsed in my seat in some pain. I'll never forget
how this felt.
The question you expect to have to ask in such
rare circumstances is whether we will hang on. To the team and Ternent's credit, we didn't
just hang on. We played on. This was no defensive backs to the wall performance from us.
We carried on playing football. If you look at the substitutions we made, it's clear that
they were all defensive, but they made sense. First Branch came on for Payton, allowing
Little to move into his natural position on the right. Then the player I wanted to be part
of this, Ronnie Jepson, replaced Armstrong. Armstrong, having played his best game in a
Burnley shirt, left to tremendous applause. Branch now filled in at left back, while Jeppo
occupied that crucial stood around in the middle of the pitch looking incredibly hard and
scaring the opposition role.
Cook could have scored. A fine dribble from
Little presented him with the ball in the centre on the edge of the box, but as Derby
again opened up, he couldn't produce one of his trademark long shots, and the ball scudded
way wide.
Derby, to their eternal shame, could produce
nothing like the barnstorming finish we might have expected. Bloody hell, if we'd have
been 1-0 down, this side would have given it everything. Derby were playing at least four
up front by the death, but a combination of limp long rage shooting and the laughably bad
Beck's lame attempts at cheating was not going to undo our notoriously tight fisted
defence. As the Derby fans leaked away, we remained in control of the game. Johnrose
replaced Cook, but he didn't even need to mistime a lunge at anybody.
After a ridiculous four and a half minutes of
injury time in a half where neither physio had been on the pitch, the final whistle
sounded. The best team had won.
Cue predictable bedlam: backslapping, triumphant
punches of air, and much, much singing. The players came over. They saluted us. We cheered
them. They set off on a lap of honour, and to their credit, the Derby fans that had stayed
applauded them with generosity. They knew the result was the right one.
Our players went off, but none of us was going
anywhere. This was the script. This is what we do when the result is what we generally
expect at this stage of the competition, a decent display and a 2-0 defeat. See Derby in
1992. I've never done it after a win. But then, I've never seen Burnley beat a side from
the top division. After too many of these games when we've played with fear and respect of
the opposition, given a good account of ourselves but gone out, at last here was Burnley
carrying off the cup upset I always thought they had in them. It was great to be proud and
also victorious for once. We weren't budging.
We ran through a repertoire in praise of Andy
Cooke and Stan Ternent. Then the players came back out as we knew they would. This was one
of those rare and wonderful moments when it felt that us and them wanted the same things,
and that it mattered as much to them as it does to us. This is a hopelessly naïve and
foolish thing to think, of course, but this was a day for raw emotion and damp-eyed
naivety, and even if it isn't true, it's nice to think it sometimes.
Now the players were out, the chant changed to
one of 'we want Stan!' Our manager is rather self-effacing at such times, preferring to
let his players take the acclaim, but eventually Johnrose went to fetch him and he was
coaxed shyly onto the pitch for a cameo appearance of a few seconds. Of course I joined in
the chants, which could make me a hypocrite as last season I called for the bloke's head.
But Ternent is the only Burnley manager I haven't ever been able to make my mind up about,
which also makes him the most interesting. For this result here, he deserves all the
praise we can offer, and forgiveness for the next bad result. Well done, Stan.
Eventually it came time to leave the ground,
which was by now deserted except for the away end. This, of course, took ages, because
these new grounds aren't designed for getting out of (see Wigan).
Once out, our euphoria took a slight dip. The perfectly good way back to the pub was now
off limits, on the say so of the police. We must 'work our way round' this barren
wilderness with a football ground stuck in it. Many more police stopped us taking anything
like a reasonable route. An empty square was cordoned off. 'Why can't we go that way?'
'We're protecting you.' 'From what?' All the Derby fans had long gone home by now.
By the simple solution of following everyone
else we ended up in the away fans’ carpark, some miles from the place we were
supposed to be. Police are only ever interested in pushing supporters towards coaches or
cars. They haven't evolved the level of intelligence it would take to work out that not
all of a club's supporters live in, and therefore wish to return to, the town where the
club is based. And while we're on this moan, what kind of walk is it to the carpark
anyway? A long slow slither down a muddy lane, unlit except for occasional flashes from
the overhead police copter. Nice ground, but they couldn't afford to build a path?
It could have all gone a bit wrong here, but as
if to prove that this was our day, a black cab appeared from nowhere and accepted the
custom of two muddy blokes with beer breath who'd obviously just been to a football match.
We were whisked to the meeting pub. Our diversion had meant that we'd had to cut one of
the scheduled pubs. Ah well, there's always next time. Next time could be next season.
The rest writes itself. A trail of pubs and then
the London train, more beer, a curry, a return home at 1am and a hangover of frightening
proportions the next day. Match of the Day and the Sunday papers served to soothe my weary
brow. All confirmed that the win was deservedly ours, and all mentioned our extraordinary
support. I've said it before, but this is a great club we follow, and occasionally the
team and the supporters produce something to remind you of that fact.
It was a privilege to be present at the last
great Burnley game of the 1990s. May there be many more to come in the next Century.
Team:
Crichton, West, Armstrong (Jepson 83), Davis, Thomas, Mellon, Cook (Johnrose 87), Little,
Mullin, Cooke, Payton (Branch 77). Subs not used: Brass and Weller.
London Clarets Man of
the Match: (1) Mitchell Thomas, (2) Paul Crichton.
Links
Hego's alternative
match report and the view from France
Derby in 1992
Derby in 1995
A round up of press coverage of the game can
be found on the CISA website
