To most younger Burnley supporters Peter Noble
is simply an ex-Claret who runs a successful sportswear business in the town. For those of
us who grew up with the club during the 1970s, however, the man is a hero. He may not have
seemed like obvious hero material when he arrived from Swindon at the beginning of the 1973-74 season for a fee of just £40,000. Burnley had just regained
their top flight status after a two year absence, by winning the then Second Division
Championship under the management of Jimmy Adamson and the Chairmanship of Bob Lord. Peter
was the club’s only close-season signing, which seems astonishing when you consider
the millions which teams newly promoted to the Premiership have to spend nowadays just to
stand a chance of staying up.
Swindon had won the League Cup not long before
this, overcoming the Clarets in their progress to Wembley, but
the general perception was that they were still small fry, and that their cup exploits had
been largely inspired by dashing winger Don Rogers, who signalled his dashing status to
all and sundry by sporting long hair and sideburns. Peter didn’t really have the
option of such dandification, given that he had already lost most of his hair by the time
he joined the Clarets. I can remember seeing a picture of the Swindon team after their
Wembley victory in the Shoot Annual, or some such publication. The photo included a
beaming Peter, already looking about forty, although I suppose he must have been about
twenty seven at the time.
Peter spent his first season in the Claret and
Blue playing at right back, with former England international Keith Newton occupying the
left back berth. Following the controversial sale of Martin Dobson
to Everton early in the 1974-75 season, he was moved into midfield, with Newton switching
to his preferred right back position to accommodate the naturally left sided Ian Brennan.
At full back Peter had shown that he was a tidy player who could tackle and distribute the
ball well, and who could get up and down the wing to help out further forward. Once
established in the pivotal midfield role, however, he quickly began to demonstrate other
facets of his game.
Martin Dobson may have had more class, and
Trevor Steven more flair, but Peter embodied a type of versatile footballer that has been
so conspicuously lacking from Burnley line-ups in the two decades since his departure. He
could tackle, he could pass the ball, he was good with his head, and he could score goals.
He was brave, putting his feet and, sometimes, his head, in where others feared to tread.
He was also a natural leader who, as captain, led by example and was big enough never to
hide when things were going badly. But what really sets him apart from the majority of
Burnley’s so-called midfield players of the eighties and nineties is the fact that he
never believed his job was done once he had laid the ball off to a team mate, as his goals
tally testifies. What would we give for a goal scoring midfielder of his calibre today?
His prowess in the air was considerable for a
player of around five foot nine, and his knack of getting in front of taller opponents in
the penalty area to send flicked headers spinning goalwards, earned him the nickname of
‘Uwe’, after West Germany’s international centre forward of the time, Uwe
Seeler. On one memorable occasion the half time draw was enlivened by a pleasing piece of
symmetry as the lucky winner, scurrying across the pitch from the Bee Hole end to claim
his prize, was revealed as a Noble look-alike (well, more of a hair-alike really),
prompting roars of ‘Uwe, Uwe’ from the Longside.
The Clarets had some good contests with
Newcastle in the 70s, and no-one who was there could possibly forget Peter’s hat
trick of headers in a tumultuous 4-1 win against them at Turf Moor in November 1974. It
must have been especially sweet for a Sunderland-born player, against the club for whom he
had made twenty-odd appearances some years earlier. It was pretty sweet for the rest of us
as well, given that the Geordies had ended Burnley’s dreams of Wembley with a 2-0
defeat in the F.A Cup semi-final at Hillsborough the previous season.
Incidentally, on an historical note, this may
have been the day that the famous seasonal carol ‘Hark now hear the Burnley sing, the
Geordies ran away’ first rang around the Turf, though it has to be acknowledged that
the Geordies were not generally known for having it away on their toes on such occasions.
On another famous occasion, he bagged all four
goals in a home game against Norwich. Unfortunately the rest of the team were so bloody
lackadaisical that the Canaries were able to hit back at the other end of the field at
regular intervals, and the game ended up as a bewilderingly anti-climactic 4-4 draw.
Though never especially noted as a hard man in
an era of infamous hard men, Peter could certainly look after himself, and never stood any
nonsense from bigger opponents. One incident which illustrated his toughness came in a
game against Middlesbrough at the Turf. With the Clarets pressing forward on the attack,
John Hickton, Boro’s centre forward, had dropped back into his own half to bolster
his team’s defence. Noble and Hickton clashed literally head-on as they leaped
together to contest a ball looped high into the away penalty area. Both men fell to the
ground, apparently stunned. After a brief stoppage to allow the physios, or in 1970s
football parlance ‘trainers’, to apply the magic sponge, Peter got to his feet
and jogged back into position rubbing his forehead. Hickton, a big barrel-chested man from
the pub landlord school of centre forwards, was stretchered from the field, to take no
further part in the game.
Peter eventually departed from Turf Moor in
1980, to see out the final days of his playing career at Bloomfield Road, which at that
time served as a sort of seaside rest home for ex-Clarets. I can’t remember whether
he ever appeared for Blackpool in a match against Burnley. I have a feeling that he did,
but I like to think that he was really just making up the numbers rather then actually
playing against us.
We used to say that if Peter Noble had had more
hair he’d have played for England. Whilst that may sound like a slightly fanciful
claim, I don’t believe he’d have been out of his depth if he had been called up
for the national team. He certainly deserves, at the very least, to be remembered by
Burnley Supporters as one of the best players to have served the Club since the great days
of the 1960s.
John Pepper
September-October 1999
