Jimmy Mullen's Claret
and Blue Army
Derby County 2 Burnley 0
FA Cup Third Round Replay, Saturday 25th
January 1992, The Baseball Ground
My only regret is that I didn’t
go to the second game, the one that was fogged off. Night matches in exotic places like
Derby were a bit beyond my brother and me then.
We were at the first match. It was quite an
occasion. If not exactly a David versus Goliath kind of encounter, we were still a side
with some years spent in the fourth division, and they were a team with profile, history
and support playing two divisions higher. There was some expectation, as we were in the
midst of a rush of fine form which would eventually sweep us majestically to promotion and
the title. Turf Moor was fairly packed. The 1992 Burnley Yearbook reports that almost
19,000 were present. The most famous Derby player was undoubtedly Peter
Shilton, who had only recently retired as an international goalkeeper after
England’s romp to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup. Ever generous in their
appreciation of a good goalie, the home crowd gave him warm applause. (This wouldn’t
be forgotten when, two and a half years later, the Plymouth side he then managed cynically
attempted to kick their way to Wembley when we encountered them in the second division
play offs.)
Of course, the man that Shilton would later send
the Argyle defenders out to kick in numbers was playing on the same team that day. Ted
McMinn, a future Claret who went on to become one of the most entertaining Burnley players
of recent times and still just about my favourite ever player, lined up against us for
Derby. (Over the course of these games, we developed something of a dislike of him. When
he signed for us, we remembered this and were initially disapproving. Then we realised
that the reason we’d not liked him was because he was skilful, tricky and hard to
contain.)
Expectations were instantly deflated when Derby
scored in the first minute. Nevertheless, this was a Burnley side of some resilience, and
we equalised through the perhaps unlikely source of Steve Harper. (In retrospect, Harper
was a decent player, but I never got past that daft haircut.) When they went back in
front, the game looked lost, but we had reckoned without Burnley folk hero Roger Eli. His preposterously good header a few minutes from time left
Shilton stranded and earned Burnley a replay. It was that rare thing, a headed goal every
bit as good as one scored by foot. Fierce and true, it was one of the best goals of the
season, and possibly the best header I’ve ever seen.
Team: Kendall,
Measham, Jakub, Davis, Pender, Farrell, Harper, Deary, Francis (Lancashire), Conroy, Eli. Scorers:
Harper 6, Eli 78. Sub not used: Yates. Attendance: 18,727.
We sat the first replay out, listening in on
Radio Lancashire. Any hopes of an upset were quickly dashed. Derby cruised into a routine
2-0 lead. So that was that gone, then. Except early on, the commentators had noted how
foggy it was, and as the game went on it grew steadily more so. Burnley supporters started
singing 'Come on you fog'. Derby fans retaliated with 'You only sing when it's foggy'. In
the end, it got to the stage where you couldn't see anything. The referee took the players
off. The match was abandoned. There was only fourteen minutes left to play.
Team: Kendall,
Measham, Jakub, Davis, Pender, Farrell, Harper, Deary, Francis, Conroy, Eli. Subs not
used: Yates, Lancashire. Attendance: 17,621.
So the replay of the replay was set for
Saturday, FA Cup Fourth Round day. Everyone else was one round ahead. This was cool, as we
sneaked into newspaper Cup previews and enjoyed a little reflected glory.
Me and our kid got to Derby hours early, got
lost, spent ages and wandered miles looking for the Baseball Ground. It wasn't an easy
place to find.
Eventually, when we did find it, I remember
being disappointed at the less than splendid surroundings. Brought up in the slums of the
fourth division, familiar with crap grounds like Blackpool, Rochdale and York, I'd
expected impressive stadia from a club two divisions higher. This was a curious hotchpotch
of stands. We had seats beyond the cover of a roof at the bottom of an old two tier stand
with posts.
Derby set about the match determined to prove
that they were better than us and that this replay was, in their view, somewhat
unnecessary. It was obvious that this would not be our day. Although we went in at half
time at 0-0, this flattered us. In the second half they comfortably went two goals ahead.
Their goals came from a goalkeeping cock up and
a deflected free kick. I can’t see any point in describing the goals in detail,
partly because I can’t remember them and can’t find the energy to fish out from
a pile of antique videos the goals I may have taped off Match of the Day, but also because
the goals weren’t important, or at least only mattered in so far as they were the
means by which we got beat 2-0.
Because of course the goals, the score, the fact
that we went out of the Cup, were not what this match was all about. This isn't why this
game has passed into legend, why it forms such a key part of recent Clarets history, why
those who were there were proud to be, and will talk about it to this day. And even
better, it wasn't the players who made that day special. It was us. We did it.
That is why this game, amongst others we will
never forget, was special. If I look back at other memorable games of our time, I remember
the part the supporters played in them of course, I remember what it felt like as a
supporter to be there, but mostly I remember a goal, or a tackle or a save, a piece of
outrageous skill or a colossal blunder, or some action or other by a player. But here, the
players and what went on on the pitch are incidental to this story.
This is how it should be. I have long maintained
that the only thing that matters in football is the supporters. We are the only thing to
provide the continuity to a club that elevates it beyond the status of a mere business.
Players, staff, managers, directors and chairmen all come and go. We endure. The history
of the club lives in its support. Without these keepers of the flame, Burnley is just a
local business that plays football and sells shirts. Well, this was our day.
The chant crept up on us half way through the
second half. It started gradually, in a defiant response to the second and decisive goal.
I wonder who started it? I wonder who starts any of these chants? It was taken up: Jimmy
Mullen’s Claret and Blue Army. By now, this was a familiar chant. The bloke’s
stock was at an all time high. His Messiah status seemed assured. (As it happened, history
was to undergo two re-writings before he would eventually emerge as a fondly-remembered
manager.) The chant had first been aired during the two months after he’d taken
charge during which we’d gone unbeaten. The club had even picked up on this and
slapped it on a T-shirt. It was a good chant too, because it started slow and orderly,
then sped up, sent the handclapping all over the place, got breathless and lost the words
in a blur.
So it went. And went on. And on and on and on.
After a while everyone somehow knew that we were going to keep this up for the rest of the
game. That was the challenge and we must not fail. We kept it going. People stood up and
joined in. The events of the game grew incidental. We were losing? So what? The chant kept
going.
The game took on an air of unreality. Balls
flashed across our box, or went out for a throw in on the half way line. The response was
identical. The chant continued. They attacked, or we threatened to break away. It
didn’t matter. The noise was the same noise. It was instructive to realise how much
we depend on the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of the watching masses to give
reality to the game. Without a crowd reacting to what is happening, football is robbed of
meaning.
There was one moment when the chant gave way.
Somehow, by a process unknown, it was communicated to us in the bottom tier that Andy
Marriott was sat watching the game from an upstairs seat.
Our love for Andy Marriott was strong and
unconditional. Here was a young lad joined on loan from Brian Clough’s Nottingham
Forest, who had come to Burnley an unknown and left three months later a hero. It
wasn’t just his all round goalkeeping ability that had endeared him to us, or his
agility, reflexes and bravery. There was that, of course, and almost from the first game
we’d been demanding we sign him on. To the club’s credit they’d tried too,
and had offered rising sums of money far in excess of anything we’d ever seen bandied
around before. But Quixotic Clough had insisted that there be no sale, and when the three
months of loan had run their course, Marriott had had to head back. He’d been chaired
from the pitch a hero after his last game, away at Northampton. But beyond all that, what
had made us bond with him is that he had clearly bonded with us. If we wanted him to stay
then it genuinely seemed that he wanted to stop. He’d repeatedly declared his desire
to sign in the local press, even taking the fairly extraordinary step of announcing that
he now regarded Burnley as his first club and Forest as just a place where he trained. I
wonder what Clough had to say about that?
I’m not sure what went wrong, but I always
assumed he’d be back at Burnley one day, and of course he has been, but only in goal
for Wrexham. The warm reception he always got shows that he isn’t forgotten, and on
that day at Derby he obviously hadn’t forgotten us either, as he’d turned up to
see us play.
Only one thing to do in the circumstances: sing.
We launched into our familiar song, ‘Swing Low Sweet Marriott’ and invited said
keeper to give us a wave. Formalities acknowledged. One of our own properly greeted. Now
back to ‘Jimmy Mullen’s Claret and Blue Army’ with a vengeance.
I suppose I had half an idea we would stop
chanting at the end of the game, applaud and then quickly abandon the away end. Not a
chance. The final whistle passed as though trivial. A little applause to greet the end was
not allowed to interrupt the momentum of the chant. We went for it with renewed vigour,
louder, faster. Some people stood on seats to add emphasis. Hardly anyone left the away
end.
The home fans, meanwhile, had run through a
range of reactions. At first, they had ridiculed us and attempted to patronise us, as fans
of a club in a higher division always do. Then the brighter ones had started to twig that
something uncommon was happening here. By the end, they were frankly gawping at our show
of support. As they left, some even gave us their applause.
This was a tough one for the police and
stewards, too. They would have been expecting us to leave quietly at the end. The fact
that we stayed and carried on singing left them bemused. Trained to intervene in crowd
unrest, nothing in the handbook prepared them for a crowd simply enjoying itself too much
to go home. They talked into walkie talkies and left the initiative to each other.
They might have had experience of protests at
football grounds before. Certainly the police would have been veterans of picket lines and
student marches. And demonstrations at football matches are nothing new. But this was an
odd one. It was a demonstration for something rather than against. It was a demonstration
in favour of a manager, not opposing him. It was an affirmation of undying support, of
belief in the club, of willingness to stick with them. Who ever heard of that kind of
demo?
Eventually the team and manager emerged to take
our tumultuous acclaim. It was by now about fifteen minutes after the game had ended, and
apart from the stewards, we were the only people in the stadium: the team, the management,
the supporters. A strong connection was forged between us that day. On a couple of
occasions that season, the team pulled off unlikely away draws through late goals, and who
will know how much of their never say die attitude was due to a determination not to let
these fans down? One also thinks of several of the players from that day who, long after
their Burnley careers had ended, would express their continuing affection and support for
the club – Chris Pearce, Ian Measham, John
Deary , Andy Farrell. At the end of the season was to come that
night at York when we sealed the title. Moments of pure joy there had their grounding
in the extraordinary unity between players, manager and supporters that was created at
Derby. Although we may have lost this particular battle, who knows what value the manner
of our defeat had in us winning the war?
Finally we filed away, conscious that we had
played our part in something quite special. This was confirmed by the press coverage,
which abandoned any pretence of reporting the game to concentrate on our show of devotion.
I would never give houseroom to the Sun, who disgraced themselves forever in the eyes of
football by printing despicable lies after Hillsborough, but even I would admit that John
Sadler’s piece from the following Monday, available on the Clarets Archive website, is
something that needs to be read and preserved.
This is a day that will always be remembered by
any Claret who had the privilege to be there. Often, when Burnley fans of my generation
are asked to name the moment when they were proudest to be a Claret, it is this day they
think of. There have been countless games where we’ve played a lot better. There have
even been times – usually at other cup games when we are losing to superior
opposition – when we’ve attempted to sustain a chant as loud and long as this,
and there have been times when we’ve come close, although of course it’s always
lacked that spontaneity and the sense of surprise in the achievement of surpassing
ourselves that we had at Derby. I have too come away from games livid with fellow Burnley
supporters, wishing to have nothing to do with any of them. But this day was special.
Always will be. Even our next visit to the Baseball Ground, when we capitulated 4-0 on a cold and snowy night in Division One, couldn’t erase
it, and I guess if they could withstand that, these memories will survive anything.
Derby had won their test series of games against
us 1-0, with two draws, and us only rescued by the weather at that. Whichever way you
looked at it, we’d been beaten. Yet we remember it like a victory. How many games
could you ever say that about?
Team: Pearce,
Measham, Jakub, Davis, Pender, Farrell, Harper (Eli), Deary, Francis, Conroy, Lancashire
(Yates). Attendance: 18,324.
