Maybe it’s a bit
sad, but I always find myself wanting to convince me and others who doubt it what a big
club we are, or at least could be again. How many times do I look at the Premiership table
and see how many clubs we could potentially be as big as. At the time of writing it’s
eight clubs: Barnsley, Bolton, Southampton, Crystal Palace, Wimbledon, Coventry, Leicester
and, notably, Derby.
I suppose for any Burnley fan, who
like myself saw my childhood hero Leighton James play in Jimmy Adamson’s ‘Team
of the Seventies’, it’s bound to be a dream to see us back in the top flight and
surviving there. Perhaps that’s why it’s consoling to read newspaper columnists
write, "But the well-worn tag ‘sleeping giant’ could have been invented for
Burnley. Today’s generation don’t realise what a big club the Clarets are.
Waddle can be the catalyst for a revival." (Ah well, half right - Ed.)
The strange thing about connections
from the past with Derby, compared with today’s common ‘wing back’ system,
is that three well-known wingers played for both clubs. Two of them were internationals!
Firstly, I will always remember
Taffy’s return to the Turf, playing for Derby in January 1976 about one month after
his transfer from Burnley for £310,000, a record figure for a transfer at that time,
which Bob Lord described as "a figure that will never be beaten." Derby won the
game 2-1 after taking the lead half way through the first half. Well, it just had to be,
didn’t it? Taffy opened the scoring.
We did replace international winger
Leighton James with future England international Tony Morley, who chose to join Burnley in
preference to Arsenal, after both clubs chasing his signature has agreed a £100,000 fee
with Preston, which at the time was a sizeable fee.
The other international winger to
play for both Derby and Burnley is the unforgettable Nick Pickering. Who will ever forget
his dazzling, elusive wing skills combined with his electrifying pace, which so terrorised
the opposition fullbacks during his four or five Burnley appearances? Pickering arrived in
Burnley in March 1993 with one England cap. Apparently he collected his cap during an
England tour of Australia when the squad was made up of the first 22 players to arrive at
the airport with boots and passport. Still, at least he tried. (I think!)
The third winger to have played for
the two sides, and whom both sets of fans will have fond memories of, is of course Tin
Man. Ted McMinn first played at Burnley, for Derby, in a third round FA Cup tie in January
1992. This game saw Ted get plenty of stick from the Burnley fans, and after the game he
was described by Steve Davis as "a bit of a cheat." Who would have thought that
two and a half years later Davis and Tin Man would be team-mates as Burnley won the
play-offs at Wembley? I for once believe that the play-off victory would not have happened
had it not been for Tin Man’s contribution towards the end of the 1993/93 season.
So there you have it, in a season
that has virtually seen the disappearance of the old-fashioned winger, with the wing-back
system in place and former England winger Chris Waddle playing sweeper for the Clarets!
And with no goals to show for the first six games of the season...
After 21 years of exile from the top
flight, here’s hoping to see plenty of creative wide play, goals, winning transfer
races for players with Arsenal and a return to the top flight during the next 21 years.
Dream on you Clarets!
Trevor Taylorson
September-October 1997
