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The
Year of the Phoenix
The 1991-92 season game by
game - part eleven
May
With the Championship won, we had a couple of games left to enjoy before the summer holiday.
2 May
Burnley 1 Wrexham 2
For once - for the first time since Jimmy Mullen took over - the game wasn't the important thing. This day was set aside for a celebration of what we had achieved. Turf Moor was packed out. They even set aside the away supporters' section of the Longside terrace to allow more home fans to get in. The Wrexham fans were squeezed into a corner of the Bob Lord Stand. All in all, some 21,216 were inside Turf Moor. It was the highest Fourth Division crowd of the season, a truly extraordinary figure even in a division where our home crowds had dominated the attendance table. We were here to salute the Champions.
It was worth getting there early. Before the game the team were presented with the Fourth Division Championship Trophy. They paraded it around a Turf Moor filled with Claret and Blue. We cheered our heroes, and more than anything, we sang Mullen's name. It was a beautifully sunny day. Life was perfect. Who can forget Chris Pearce, making the lap of honour in a suit on his last appearance at Turf Moor as a Claret, climbing onto the spare dugouts in front of the Longside to take the applause of the crowd? Then there were the kids with their home made sign, 'Jimmy Fixed It For Us'. It was magical.
The game was utterly anticlimactic, of course. Time to reach for the cliché of after-the-lord-mayor's-show. Mike Conroy's first half goal sent us in ahead at the break, but as the team perhaps tired Wrexham struck twice in the second half to take the win, and spoil our party slightly. Perhaps they felt a little avenged for the 6-2 win at their place which had made Mullen a serious contender for the manager's job. I can't remember anything about the goals, unfortunately, as I wasn't taking these last matches too seriously.
There was a plan for a lap of honour after the match, but as usual, the pitch invasion intervened. Invading the pitch seems to have become an end of season ritual, and personally, I don't think a great deal of harm is done. I remember being a bit disappointed that we wouldn't see another lap of honour, but then, I was one of thousands who joined in the good natured invasion. Supporters massed on the touchline as the clock neared 90 minutes. It actually became impossible to run the game safely, such were the numbers gathered around the pitch. The linesmen couldn't run up and down, and things got a bit silly when a Wrexham player running down the wing was 'tackled' by a member of the crowd. The referee did the sensible thing and called it to a halt slightly before time, and the pitch invasion began in earnest. Me and my brother took our time and sauntered on. For novelty value, we'd been watching the game from the bit of the Longside normally used by the away supporters. Well, it was something different. We wandered round the pitch and joined in the songs. Only slowly, reluctantly, did we leave, climbing back up onto the away Longside and out through an unfamiliar set of gates, stopping on the way to take a last look around the place. That was it until August. Only when the season's ended do you realise how much you'll miss going to Turf Moor.
Team: Williams, Measham, Jakub, Davis, Pender, Farrell (Yates), Painter, Deary, Francis, Conroy, McKenzie (Monington).
Burnley scorer: Conroy (33).
Attendance: 21,216.
5 May
Rochdale 1 Burnley 3
So finally we got to play Rochdale, after the two abortive attempts. This was a PS, but an enjoyable one. Rochdale fancied themselves local rivals then - I know, you could scarcely believe it now, but that's how it was. They were keen to spoil our party, and they needed the points to get into the play-offs. We simply knew we were above this sort of thing now. We had bigger things ahead of us. This was a last reminder of all we were leaving behind.
It looked like the hangover was continuing when Rochdale took an early lead. The supporters' chants of 'Third Division Rubbish' were unusually inventive. Then we remembered we were the better team, and quickly struck back. The source of our equaliser was unlikely, though. It's fair to say that Ian Measham wasn't known for his goals. Attitude, running, tackling - these were the things we expected from him, and he'd had a great season, but goals did not come into the equation. So we knew it was party night when he scored for the second time in his Burnley career. Then it was time for Conroy to provide a bit of contrast and score one final goal, his 29th of the season, finishing in the only appropriate way what he'd started all those months ago back at Rotherham in August. By now we were cruising. Robbie Painter grabbed a third in the second half to provide us with three gloriously unnecessary points.
It was all rather more serious for Rochdale, of course, as our win cost them the play-offs. Barnet took the last place instead. Barry Fry, watching from the stand, needn't have worried about our will to win. We still hadn't lost two in a row under Mullen.
We enjoyed taunting the Rochdale fans (although scuffles broke out outside the ground) safe in the knowledge that we were taking our leave and that their attempts at a rivalry must now end. Yes, this felt good.
One odd footnote was provided by David Williams, who had of course played in both matches, at Turf Moor for Rochdale and here for the side that employed him. That day, he'd done everything to keep us out and help his temporary club to win. Here, he paid back a little by saving a penalty.
And that was the end of the season. The day after, the team swapped Spotland for the very different surroundings of Bermuda. Our sponsors Endsleigh sent them there for a celebratory holiday. It was no more than they deserved. They'd been great. We were proud of them. In some ways, it was a shame it was over.
Team: Williams, Measham, Jakub, Davis, Pender, Yates, Painter, Deary, Conroy, Francis, Harper (McKenzie).
Burnley scorers: Measham (30), Conroy (41), Painter (67).
Attendance: 8,175.
19 May
Burnley 0 Ajax 1
Well, kind of. Quite what this was all about I didn't really know, but about 11,000 turned up for a final, final visit to Turf Moor before the summer, to see this post-season friendly. It was a mystifying fixture, but as we were in a good mood we were happy to go along to see our disappointingly untanned heroes. Ajax had just won the UEFA Cup while we had just won the Fourth Division Championship, so this was a battle for the unofficial Championship of Europe. More or less. The local paper produced a special (four page) pull out supplement. It featured some sad local who was a 'life long' fan of Ajax and was looking forward to seeing them. Wonder what happened to him?
As it happened, Ajax didn't exactly send their first team. It was an Ajax XI lacking stars. I've no idea what that team was, but they still had a reputation for producing players then, so it's possible that there in the reserve and youth line up were some who went on to become famous. They were still too good for us, and in a far from entertaining game they were the better side, winning with a late goal. We all applauded and went home.
And that really was the end of the season. When the fixtures came out, we were in the Second Division. We had the Premier League now, so the remaining three divisions of the Football League shuffled up one. We were the last Champions of the Fourth Division. Robbie Painter had scored the last Fourth Division goal in the last Fourth Division match. To exemplify our crazy history, we were the second team, after Wolves, to win the Championships of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Divisions.
Afterthoughts
In hindsight, perhaps the greatest testament of how Mullen turned round Casper's team rests in the fact that none of the players who did it for us went on to find fame. Let's look at how they fared.
The inspirational Steve Davis left in the wake of our relegation from the First Division in 1995, but even then he only went to First Division Luton, who quickly became Second Division Luton, and of course the prodigal son returned in 1998.
John Francis shocked us all in the summer by going to Cambridge, then a rising team under John Beck, but he was back on the following transfer deadline day. He went on to play a heroic role in our play-off win of 1994, before injury finally forced him out of the game. He left Burnley for the second time in 1996.
Mike Conroy, disappointingly, didn't repeat his goalscoring feats the next season, when he scored only seven league goals. He was always a good player, and he'd looked set for big things - there was once talk of a move to Newcastle - but he didn’t ever regain that scoring form. At the end of the 1992/93 season, in dispute over a new contract, he moved to Preston, like so many others. He experienced another promotion from the now Third Division, with Fulham in 1997, before going on to Blackpool and others, then finally heading off to play in Australia. Conroy genuinely seems to have regretted leaving Burnley, having said that every player was meant to play for one club, and that he should have been at Burnley for years.
The rest, when they left Burnley over the following years, often when released at the end of contracts, went to lower divisions, and eventually the non league. We already know that the seven released by Mullen after the York Game did not cause a further ripple. As for the others, the great John Deary was sold cheaply to Rochdale in 1995, perversely as we struggled to hang on to First Division status. He ended up at Southport, before a heart condition sadly forced him to retire. Roger Eli never recovered from his injuries, and was released in 1994, going on to turn up occasionally at Partick Thistle, Scunthorpe and in Hong Kong. Ian Measham was sold suddenly to Doncaster early in the 1993/94 season. He suffered a dreadful injury when he broke his neck in a game, and was out for more than a year. His fellow fullback Joe Jakub left us in the summer of 1993, but still managed to keep his career going a bit longer with Chester and Wigan. John Pender made the seemingly obligatory departure for Wigan after five years of good service in 1995.
After leaving us in 1993, Steve Harper rattled around the lower divisions with Doncaster, Mansfield and Hull, and at the time of writing has just been released by Darlington. Adrian Randall, Mullen's first signing, remained an enigma, good in one match in every three but uninvolved in the other two. He was sold to York for £140,000 in 1995 - a record fee for them - but subsequently disappeared into non-league. He re-emerged for a spell at Forest Green Rovers, but I last heard of him driving taxis in Salisbury. Nicky Walker, who’d impressed on loan, went on to play for Partick and Aberdeen, and then Ross County and the team with too many names, Inverness Caledonian Thistle. He appeared in Scotland's squad for Euro 96, but didn't get a game. Paul McKenzie also played for Inverness CT after leaving in the summer of 1993. His appearance in the celebration match against Wrexham was his only start in League football. David Williams went to Cardiff in 1994, and played a surprisingly substantial number of games for them.
We never heard of Mark Kendall again.
Graham Lancashire didn’t live up to the massive potential he showed when he burst into the team and scored all those goals in Mullen's early days. His career since then is saddening, and persistent injuries have played a part. After a brief spell on loan at Halifax and a rather successful one at Chester, he went to Preston in 1994, then down the North West food chain to Wigan and Rochdale. His scoring record at both those clubs wasn't bad, and each time he moved, money changed hands, but 2001 saw him joining Hednesford Town, of the Dr Marten's League, on a free transfer. What could have been?
Ten years on, most have hung up their boots, at least at the professional level. Davis is the only one still playing for Burnley, while at the time of writing Mark Yates, of all people, has made a rare appearance on the back pages, experiencing promotion again as the captain of Third Division play-off winners Cheltenham. He played for Doncaster and Kidderminster in between, having left Burnley in the summer of 1993. Andy Marriott never realised his apparent destiny of coming back to Burnley. After returning to Forest, he appeared in two Wembley cup finals that season: the ZDS Final, an unloved and pointless trophy, which they won, and the League Cup, which they lost. Forest finally decided they didn't need him in December 1993, by which time Marlon Beresford had established himself as the first choice Burnley goalie. The moment had passed. He went to Wrexham, then Sunderland, and is currently at Barnsley.
Danny Sonner, a bit part player in this season, disappeared into the depths of German lower division football in 1993, surprisingly re-emerging later as a midfielder for Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham. Andy Farrell is clearly one of those players who will keep going as long as he can, and at the time of writing plays for the ex-Claret colony of Leigh RMI, having travelled via Wigan, Rochdale and Morecambe since leaving us in 1994. Robbie Painter, after a successful spell with Darlington, having left us in 1993, and then one at Rochdale, was, when I last heard, turning out for Gateshead. Mark Monington, from Rotherham and Rochdale, for whom he both played significant numbers of games since leaving in 1994, found himself at Boston United, newly promoted to the League as I write in 2002.
There aren't many big clubs in that list. Only Davis moved upwards when he left Burnley. These were battlers, lower division players almost to a man. That was the measure of Mullen's achievement.
And what of Jimmy Mullen? We had another promotion, to the unimaginable level of the First Division, via the play-offs in 1994, but that came at the end of a frustrating season in which Mullen's tactics and transfers were called into serious question for the first time. The rampant, attacking football was rarely seen, while we no longer expected to win away - we were back to winning three or four away games a season. Although the glorious promotion through the play-offs made doubters think again, the First Division season that followed was pretty awful. The occasional highs punctuated many lows, and our relegation came as no surprise. The finger of blame had to point at Mullen, and where three years ago we’d been singing his praises, now we chanted ‘down cos of Mullen’. Football’s like that. It’s a fickle game.
Mullen looked out of his depth in the First Division, his brand of motivational, up and at 'em management clearly not enough two levels higher than the one he'd started out in. He was never going to come back from that. He lingered on, but the end of his reign the following season, with us struggling low down in the Second Division and facing up to the prospect of a return to the depths, was sad. Mullen had needed to go for a while, but he was left out to dry by a board that specialised in inaction, only finally resigning when an altercation with a few kids in a Chinese takeaway was blown out of all proportion, dramatising the levels of dissatisfaction.
On Monday 12 February 1996, Jimmy Mullen resigned as Manager of Burnley after a little under four and a half years. His time had taken in two promotions and one relegation. Yes, it was rarely dull. Now the Mullen years were over, a period of drift and crisis loomed. Only when we got Barry Kilby in charge of the club and Stan Ternent in charge of the team did things start looking up.
He must have been hoping to get back into management - it's his line of work - but mysteriously, it never really happened. In the six years since leaving Burnley, we've seen little of him. He was immediately linked with the vacancy at Swansea, but that didn’t come to anything, and we next heard of him at Sligo Rovers in October that year. He left by mutual consent the following August, apparently because he hadn’t moved house there permanently, and went on to have unsuccessful stints at Telford United and Merthyr Tydfil. He was unhappy at being sacked by Telford and reported to be seeking compensation. In March 1999 he was said to be up for the vacant Hartlepool job, but in 2000 his name was connected with Bromsgrove Rovers. Lower points were to come. I got a heartbreaking e-mail from a friend the other year that referred to a story in the Shropshire Star. Mullen had taken the reigns as manager of Little Drayton Rangers - a local league side in Shropshire. In October 2001, Mullen made the final two for the Wrexham job recently vacated by Brian Flynn. Bizarrely, the Wrexham board chose the other candidate, Denis Smith, a manager who seems to relegate every club he manages. Wrexham went down. Mullen said at the time, "I was told that the decision could have been resolved on the toss of coin. How do feel I about that? Gutted." He was linked with Chester in December 2001, while recently he publicly threw his hat into the ring for the latest Swansea vacancy. At the time of writing, he has a job coaching Wales' under 19 side.
It’s extraordinary that, in six years, no League club has seen fit to give him another chance in management. However acrimoniously it ended with us, he did prove himself to be a good, lower division manager. I suppose people are hoping for more than that when appointing bigger names, however mystifying it is that some proven failures always seem able to get another job.
But that’s probably enough of looking into the future. I think we'll leave them there, as we shuffle out of Turf Moor on a May evening. We'll end our story while things are still rosy, and say goodbye to Jimmy Mullen and the team, heroes all of them, as they prepare for the challenge of life in a higher division. Just at this moment, he and they couldn't do any wrong. I'm not tempted to go on into next season, starting with the first Burnley game I ever saw in a higher division (a 1-0 home win against Swansea), because it all got more complicated after that. Things would never again be so simple, or so effortless, or such fun.
1991/92 was my defining season. I used to say, glibly, that 1991/92 was the only season when I really enjoyed my football. It was the only season when I turned up to games in full expectation of a win. I looked forward to watching us in action week after week, scoring goals and winning well. I even went to away games confident of seeing us get a result. I thought I would never see such a time again. That was until 1999/2000, anyway.
Somewhere along the way in 1994 I fell out with Mullen. After one bad away defeat too many, I lost my rag and did something I never thought I would: call for him to go. He should have gone sooner. His tragedy was that he stayed too long. But, looking back, I was harsh on him, too harsh. I was younger then, and even less sensible than now, and with hindsight, I was too free with my vitriol, too heavy with the sarcasm. I said and wrote some harsh things about Mullen, and now I don't think he deserved them. By the end, he was only a decent man out of his depth trying to struggle on. Of course, you can't see these things when you're close to them. You have to take a step back. Which was why, ten years after that glorious season, I found myself writing this. If not a penance, it's been an attempt to redress the balance and do right by someone who deserves praise for what he did. Writing this has been a labour, but one of love. Ten years on, and with us where we are now, my gratitude to Jimmy Mullen for what he did for us in 1991/92 remains undiminished. Thanks, Jimmy.
Firmo
May 2002
The 1991/1992 season
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