Sit down, if you've got a
life...
some reflections on an ancient
rivalry
It occurred to me during the build up to the
recent unpleasantness that was Sunday 17 December 2000, that I might set down on paper a
sort of alternative view of the Clarets’ oldest and bitterest rivalry. At the risk of
alienating much of our readership, I may just as well say it and get it out of the way. I
don’t particularly hate Blackburn Rovers. Oh dear. Look, just bear with me for a
moment. I know that it’s my duty to hate them, and I fully understand that this whole
Clarets/Rovers thing is one of the bitterest and potentially most violent rivalries in
football. I do, after all, have first hand experience of East Lancashire derby games from
the 1970s and 80s. It’s just that if I had to take a polygraph test on whether I
truly, madly and deeply hate Blackburn, then I’d have to say that no, I don’t.
So, why don’t I hate them, then? Well,
the most obvious reason is that I wasn’t born in Burnley or its immediate catchment
area (by which I mean the surrounding towns of Nelson and Colne or, in the other
direction, Accrington). Growing up some 15 miles to the south, I was largely unaware of
the extent of the bitterness towards Blackburn. When I first started watching the Clarets
in the early 1970s, they were in the old second division, i.e. the same division they are
in at the moment. Blackburn, at that time, were in the old third division, and I’d
never even met anyone who supported them. We left them even further behind in 1973 by
gaining promotion to the old First Division. After three seasons in the top flight,
however, we dropped back into the second division, where Rovers now awaited us. In those
far-off days, pre-season games between local rivals were actually quite common, often by
virtue of dimly remembered tournaments such as the Texaco Cup. The first time I ever saw a
game against Rovers was at Ewood Park in one such pre-season event.
Getting to Blackburn from Littleborough
necessitated a bus journey over the moors via Rochdale, in the company of my mate Jon
Hart. By an odd quirk of fate, Jon is these days employed in a law and order capacity in,
of all places, Blackburn, but remains a loyal Claret to this day. I can’t remember a
thing about the game, not even the result. What I can remember is being rather taken aback
by the evident level of mutual hatred between the two sets of supporters. When you saw
some guy wearing a tee shirt bearing the printed slogan ‘BRFC F**k Burnley’ you
couldn’t help but reflect that these people obviously didn’t like us. In those
days, you see, Burnley were undoubtedly the bigger club. Not only had we recently been in
the top division, we had a better ground as well as bigger support.
In games where league points were at stake,
the atmosphere was, of course, even more highly charged. A pattern subsequently emerged
for visits to Ewood, particularly those undertaken by public transport. Broadly this was:
catch bus to Burnley and drink several pints prior to catching the train to Mill Hill
station in the company of several hundred other Clarets. Then march to the ground under
police escort, surveying the wreckage of smashed pubs along the way. After the game, march
back to Mill Hill station under escort, dodging missiles aimed in our direction, and with
sporadic scuffles breaking out all along the route.
The return journey via Burnley usually took a
long time, and it has to be said that this was often due to the behaviour of the
travelling support. On one particularly horrendous occasion, a fusillade of light bulbs
and other assorted fittings rained onto the platform as the special train on which I was
travelling passed through Blackburn station. I recall that it took that train an hour and
a half to get as far as Accrington, for the simple reason that the Burnley fans on board
were busily smashing everything that could be smashed. The train eventually ground to a
halt at Rosegrove, giving the onboard vandals time to cool off during the long walk into
town.
So far as the actual games are concerned,
there were some good and some bad. I’ve seen us win at Ewood, courtesy on one
memorable occasion of a fantastic goal by Terry Cochrane. I’ve also seen us beat them
at Turf Moor, thanks to goals from the likes of Malcolm Smith and my all time hero Peter
Noble. The bad memories include a 3-2 defeat at Turf Moor (Rovers were 3-0 up at half
time) and, of course, the 2-1 defeat at Ewood in 1983 which hammered another nail into our
relegation coffin, and which famously featured the partial demolition of the old Darwen
end. The years since 1983 have included some terrible times for our club, as well as
latterly some much better ones, and these have been thoroughly documented elsewhere.
I don’t want to give the impression that
I don’t enter into the spirit of the big rivalry at all. Of course I do. In the late
1980s when Rovers were still trying (unsuccessfully) to get into the Premiership, I went
along to Selhurst Park in the hope that Palace would manage to overturn a 3-1 first leg
play-off deficit against them. Inspired by future Claret Ian Wright, Wright, Wright,
Palace won 3-0 in front of a delirious home support and, as you might expect, a paltry
away following. I was depressed when Rovers won the Premiership, and I laughed myself
stupid at the outcome of their forays into Europe. It’s just that I haven’t
spent the past seventeen years obsessing over them in the way that some Burnley supporters
obviously have. I don’t have time to devote my every waking moment to hating
Blackburn, even if I wanted to. I’m sorry, but I’ve got better things to do.
That’s why I prefer to remain seated during the tediously predictable refrain of
‘Stand Up if you Hate Bar Stewards’, with which so many of our Lancashire based
fellow Clarets like to serenade the bewildered home supporters at such diverse venues as
Wycombe, Watford and Wolverhampton.
I think what I’m trying to say is: by
all means feel free to hate Blackburn if you choose to, but don’t let it take over
your life. If you do, then you run the risk of ending up like those supporters of Rochdale
and Stockport whose whole raison d’être seemed
to be to hate Burnley, rather than to support their own teams. Bitter little people
leading bitter little lives. The fact that we only ever viewed them with total
indifference, of course, just served to inflame them even further. In fact, that’s
probably the sort of disdainful approach that some of the more arriviste element among
Rovers’ support would like to take towards us.
So there you have it. We’ve come a long
way in the past two years, and we’ve got a bit further to go before we can seriously
expect to compete on equal terms with one of the richest clubs in English football. We
know who we are. We are Burnley, and we shouldn’t feel the need to define ourselves
by the extent of our hatred towards our nearest neighbours. Not that I expect too many
people to agree with me.
John Pepper
January 2001
