Room 101 - Clarets Nightmares
Some personal Betes Noire by John
Pepper
Telford
During what was surely the darkest season in
Burnley’s history (1986/87), there were many, many lows and only one real high, in
the form of the Orient match (unless you include an away win at Rochdale). Many people
would doubtless nominate the 6-0 home defeat by Hereford as their all-time low point, and
with good reason. For my money though, the most hateful time of that awful season came in
the first round of the FA Cup at Telford. To put this into context, you have to bear in
mind that in the mid-eighties just about every club had its ‘firm’ of hooligans
who would hang around at railway stations, or in town centres, forming self-appointed
reception committees for any away supporters who had the temerity to encroach onto their
territory. Consequently, there were hardly any league grounds which you could visit
without feeling some apprehension about what might happen to you if you ran into the wrong
people somewhere between the ground and the railway station.
Having drawn a non-league team, I felt that we
might at least be able to have a day out without the ever present threat of physical
violence, even though there were no grounds for optimism about the game (in fact Burnley
went into it as underdogs, which tells you something). Well, how wrong can you be? The
first sight that greeted us on arrival at Wellington station was a group of between twenty
and thirty local ‘boys’ waiting at the top of the road, looking to batter anyone
getting off the train. A boozer immediately adjacent to the station provided a temporary
refuge, until the arrival of the aforementioned thugs necessitated a discreet exit and a
taxi ride to the ground. The game was, by any standards, a disaster. Burnley put up
minimal resistance against a fired-up Telford side and were handed a deserved 3-0
spanking. At the final whistle, a band of local nutters ran onto the pitch to confront the
travelling Clarets, and missiles were exchanged as the police strove to keep the two
contingents apart. I hadn’t a clue how to find the station, but made my way back by
the simple expedient of following Dave Burnley, to whom I feel a debt of gratitude to this
day (thanks Dave). So there you have it, a total humiliation by a non-league side and a
completely horrible day out. Please consign this obscure Midlands ex-New Town to oblivion,
immediately!
Simon Garner
In the dim and distant days when Burnley used to
play Blackburn on something like level terms, i.e. in the same division, the Rovers team
invariably included players who had been at Ewood for years, in contrast to the parade of
highly paid mercenaries they have employed in more recent times. As a consequence of this,
the hatred always seemed to have a much more personal dimension to it. From Donkey centre
half Glen Keeley to clown look-alike Noel Brotherston, these guys knew we hated them, and
they hated us back. Most despicable of them all was the Prince of Darkness himself, Simon
Garner. No-one, Kurt Nogan included, has ever taken more genuine pleasure in scoring goals
against the Clarets, and scoring goals against us was something which Garner did with
gut-wrenching regularity. The fact that he will be forever implicated, in the minds of
many Clarets, in the infamous banner flying incident during the play off match against
Torquay just further consolidates his status as our nemesis par excellence. Even after
leaving Ewood Park he continued to haunt us. On joining West Brom, he announced how much
he was looking forward to scoring against Burnley, something which he duly achieved both
at the Turf and the Hawthorns in his first season with the Baggies. The next time we
encountered him he was playing for Wycombe. He scored against us, obviously. Not content
with tormenting us during his league career, Garner re-appeared at Wycombe a couple of
seasons ago, to taunt us by making the half time draw. Put the misbegotten gargoyle in
Room 101, preferably entombed forever in the Bee Hole toilets!
The Bee Hole
toilets
If you have ever caught one of those wildlife
documentaries where the presenter is reporting from the inside of a pitch black cave in
South America inhabited by thousands of bats, the stench from whose bodily functions is
almost causing him to pass out, then you have some idea of what the old Bee Hole toilets
used to be like. They were basically medieval latrines passed off as 20th century
facilities. Though never, to my knowledge, officially designated as Satan’s personal
urinal, it always smelled like he’d just popped in there to relieve himself after
double pie and peas and a heavy session in the Park View. I just hope that a thorough
contaminated land survey of the site was carried out before the construction of the Jimmy
McIlroy stand.
National
newspaper ‘articles’ about Burnley
Are you chronically idle in mind and body?
Can’t be arsed to work for a living but want to get your hands on some dosh without
the slightest mental or physical effort? Why not try the world’s laziest profession?
You may have noticed that about once a season, the so-called ‘quality press’
will condescend to acknowledge our club’s existence by commissioning some hack to
cobble together a string of weary old clichés about Burnley’s history, which is then
presented to a credulous readership as a match report. Articles of this kind tend to bear
about as much resemblance to genuine sports reporting as a join the dots puzzle does to
the Mona Lisa.
Anyway, here’s how to do it. Simply take a
selection of the following phrases and arrange them at random: ‘Sleeping Giant’
‘founder members’, ‘proud tradition’, ‘vintage claret’,
‘used to nurture home-grown talent’, ‘Bob Lord’, ‘passionate
fans’, ‘maximum wage’, ‘Pennine moorland’, ‘terraced
houses’, ‘mills (preferably dark and satanic)’, and ‘pies’. You
should then send them to the sports desk of any national broadsheet newspaper, claiming
that this represents a report on a recent Burnley game. If you want to take even more
blatant liberties, then you should feel free to work in references to old leather
footballs with laces in them, as well as cloth caps, clogs, whippets and factory hooters.
It’s not that I object to reporters
painting in a bit of local colour. On the contrary, this can often liven up otherwise
leaden accounts of matches between teams of which I know little and care even less. What I
do object to is the kind of lazy-arsed crap that appeared in The Times recently,
masquerading as a report on the 1-0 home win against Stoke. I mean, is it asking too much
to expect the ‘journalist’ under whose name the report appeared actually to
attend the game and report on what he saw and heard? I didn’t read anything in that
article which could not have been put together, without leaving the office, by recycling
previous pieces about Burnley and by phoning up Club Call after the game in order to
insert quotations from the respective team managers. An absolute disgrace but, sadly, all
too typical of the ‘coverage’ afforded to lower division teams by the broadsheet
press. Enough of this drivel!
John Pepper
September-October 1999
Links - National newspaper 'articles'
about Burnley , national newspaper 'articles' about Burnley
and national newspaper 'articles' about Burnley (a rich seam,
this)
