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The Year of the Phoenix The 1991-92 season game by game - part one It was just the other week that I realised it is now ten years since the 1991-92 season - our last season in the Fourth Division. This was, really, where the modern era began. I got quite annoyed at not having started a game by game account of the season, and then I decided to do it anyway. Here, for now, are the early months. More will follow. Summer 1991 It was an odd season for me, being the first, and still one of only two seasons, in which I followed Burnley while living within reasonable distance of Turf Moor. Earlier seasons had seen me making my trips to Turf Moor from Leeds, while halfway through the 1993-94 season I became a London Claret. But in the summer of 1991 I graduated, couldn't get a job, and scuttled off back to Nelson. Like many locally based Clarets, I would go to many home games but few away. Until I left again in January 1994, I went to just about every home game. Whatever the competition, however meaningless the fixture, if it was at Turf Moor, me and my brother would be there. Friendlies, Leyland Daf Cup, whatever. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed it, as I spent five months signing on. I suppose football was cheaper then and I didn’t do much else. Interesting to think now that in similar circumstances I probably wouldn’t be able to afford to keep up my appearances, and the habit would be in danger of going cold. Anyway, in November I got a job, of sorts, which helped. As for the team, there were some grounds for optimism that summer. We’d at least got to the play-offs the year before, although the way we’d blown it against Torquay didn’t inspire confidence. You still hear about how Frank Casper, the manager, disgraced himself that Sunday lunchtime at Plainmoor. As a sort of reward for the higher than usual finish, he’d been given a one year contract extension. There were the usual summer departures of players who hadn’t made it, such as Nigel Smith and John Smyth, and those who’d given decent service but whose time was up. Smith had played a handful of games and shown some promise, while Smyth had never quite made the first team. Neil Grewcock and Ray Deakin were, however, better players than most of their Claret contemporaries. Grewcock’s career arguably should have been ended by injury before he even joined Burnley, and perhaps again by a dreadful foul in 1988/89, but there were still times when he showed genuine flair. He wasn't quite a winger any more, but he had his moments. He went on to play for non-league club Burnley Bank Hall, and to work at Burnley General Hospital. Deakin was a no nonsense, unskilled defender, famous for his habit of 'woosh’-ing the ball as far as he could, accompanied by crowd sound affects, but he was basically competent; a one eyed player who was king in a defence of the blind. As we got better central defenders, he became a left back. I recall some local telly feature about him also driving the team coach as a sideline. Perhaps, by making himself useful, he hoped to hang around. But I never did see him doing a Billy Ingham on the local buses. Both Deakin and Grewcock had played in the ‘Orient Game’, so earn their place in history; Deakin had captained us that day, while Grewcock scored the first of our priceless two goals. When they retired, the last of the Orient Game team had gone. Perhaps this was a significant break. There were two other departures, one disappointing, one surprising. It might be hard to grasp for anyone who started watching Burnley more recently than me, but there did only used to be one Steve Davis. I thought he was brilliant. As a recent convert to the joys of live football, he was my first Burnley hero. He was a blond, competitive, serious central defender, and the club captain. He was good in the air but fast too, and when we signed the solid John Pender in the 1990-91 season, we had a strong central defence. He played - naturally enough - 147 League games (actually, he was sub in another 11, which rather spoils it) since signing for £15,000 from Crewe in the season after the Orient Game. A bargain. He never played fewer than 30 games a season, and he was ever present in the year we got to the play-offs. So in my then short time watching Burnley, he was seemingly always there. I was gutted when we sold him. He went to Barnsley for £180,000. Barnsley had sold Carl Tiler to Forest for somewhere over a million. I recall Frank Casper, in a rare piece in the Guardian, musing about whether Tiler was that much better than the lad he'd sold. Ironically, given his good appearance record for us, in the following years Davis' career was dogged by injuries, although he resurfaced to play against us for Oxford in the 1999-2000 season. Still, at that time, we couldn't have turned the offer down. Don’t laugh, but £180,000 was a lot of money, then, for us. Pender was named captain in succession to Davis. I wasn’t so worried about Ron Futcher buggering off. This much travelled, ageing striker was the original ‘Rocket Ron’. I wasn’t thrilled when we signed him from Port Vale for £65,000 in the 1989-90 season. He was 33 years old then, and that looked like too much money. We were his 13th club. Four of his previous clubs had been in America, for heaven's sake. Still, in that first season he finished our joint top scorer – with seven goals. He certainly played a part in our run to the play-offs the following season, but despite the 18 goals then, he never quite managed to become a cult hero. He was sometimes accused of laziness, arrogance or unpopularity with the rest of the team. But it was still a shock that he left. After haggling over money his contract was terminated and he offed and joined Crewe. This made us laugh a bit; weren’t Crewe supposed to be the epitome of young, home-grown, neat football? Good riddance to him, then. But we’d need a striker. We got one we’d never heard of. Mike Conroy joined from Reading for £40,000. Hmm. Reports seemed to indicate he’d done alright in Scotland, but hadn’t made an impression with Reading, where he’d ended up filling in here and there, including, strangely, a spell at right back. This didn’t sound too impressive, but we’d give him a chance. A couple of free transfers also made their way to Turf Moor, as was usual. One was minor. Young goalkeeper Ian Walsh from Everton, anyone? Steve Harper, a winger from Preston NE, was another. I found out he joined by accident. I was dissecting the Lancashire Evening Telegraph one day and there was a reference to Ian Measham having been omitted from the pre-season trip to Russia – yes, Russia – because he was haggling over his contract. He was reported as being training at Burnley with Steve Harper. So, welcome Steve Harper. The most significant signing came just before the start of the season, and it was the fillip we needed. Out with one Steve Davis, in with another. Welcome, then, for the second time, the Steve Davis who would become the outstanding Burnley player of the 1990s. We’d had him before, of course, on loan from Southampton in 1989/90. He’d even played with the other Steve Davis. Then we’d drooled over his obvious class, and wished we could sign him. But he went back to Southampton, where he got a very occasional game, and a loan spell at Notts County. Looking back now, it seems he was always destined to play for us, but during his loan spell he'd seemed too good for us, and in the years between it's amazing no one else signed him. But for £60,000, he was ours. The summer friendlies were an odd collection of games. There was the mini tour of the USSR. I assumed one of the Directors had business interests there. We'd already played Dynamo Brest at home the year before. Now we were off to play two other teams you'd never heard of. We drew 1-1 with Dynamo Stavropol, Conroy scoring, and then got the same score against Asmaral (surely something you buy from the chemists?), with a goal by John Francis. Then, after this exotica, it was back to the tedium of the Lancashire 'Manx' Cup. This was an annual competition where we played humdrum local teams, and it hadn't yet quite been finished off by the withdrawal of the top sides one by one. We lost at home 2-0 against Bury, with one of them being a John Pender own goal. Nigel Smith played for Bury. I assume I was at the game. Then during the week we at least had a spicier encounter in the same competition, when we played Blackburn at home. Oddly enough, this was the first time I have seen us play Blackburn. It felt strange to see them at Turf Moor. The crowd was bigger than we normally got for a Lancashire Cup game, and so was the police presence. It was 1-1 again, with another goal from Conroy, which was encouraging, but worryingly, another Pender og. A couple of nights later we held a testimonial for retiring, long-serving physio Jimmy Holland. I had to miss this, going back to Leeds for a former housemate's stag night. Oldham, then a first division side, were the opposition, and they won 2-1. Our goal came from a young substitute, Graham Lancashire. We then went on to crash an embarrassing 5-1 away at Preston in our final Lancashire Cup game. Blame the plastic pitch. John Deary scored ours. So, with the last of the friendlies played and with Steve Davis signed, we were poised for the new season, hoping as ever that this would be the one. Firmo September 2001 Part two - August 1991 The 1991/1992 season menu |