Time Team
There’s one sure-fire way of
distinguishing a genuine alien spacecraft from your run-of-the-mill UFO: a sudden burst of
incredible speed from a standing start, or so my mate says. He was, just the other day,
explaining to me how this is done. Through technological expertise well beyond the ken of
mere earthlings, the craft generates an incredibly strong force of gravitational
attraction from its chosen destination, a force which the craft then ‘attaches’
itself to before deactivating its pull. Upon this, the field of gravity snaps back into
place at incomprehensible speed, taking the time-travelling craft with it. Allegedly.
This idea of bending time and space reminded me
of Arthur Miller's biography and its theme of how events seemed, in hindsight, to be
elastically connected through time: threads which twisted and wended through the years,
drawing on themselves as they wove recurring patterns into his life, however tenuously
connected they appeared to be at the time.
As we approach the Millennium (AKA an arbitrary
figure exploited for the purposes of profit), we seem to be having a rash of
pre-millennial tension (sorry about the unfortunate metaphor there) centred on the passage
of time and the uncertainty of the future. Leonard Nimoy sells us PCs, blithely dismissing
the possibility of time travel in the process. Lots of ordinary looking people seemingly
from far-flung corners of the earth (probably all actors based in London) beseech us with
the irritating refrain of "Are you ready?", an advert distinguished only by the
fact that the advertiser doesn’t seem to be selling us anything.
A typically English antidote to all this
nonsense comes in the form of the old Werthers Originals ad. In its own caramelised,
middle-England way, this reminds us that time ticks gently on and we all end up as old
farts and grandparents. (Am I the only one who has doubts about the line "I remember
thinking I must be someone very special for my Grandad to give me his sweet butter
candy."?)
Another much more sobering poke in the eye for
all quaking Millennarians would be a piece of political agit-prop that Chumbawamba would
be proud of. I remember a Greenpeace leaflet, released many years ago now, that condensed
the life of the Earth into 42 years – to symbolise the fact that our planet was
middle-aged. From this perspective of time, the dinosaurs became extinct a few hours ago,
human beings appeared a few minutes ago and that in the last few seconds we have virtually
destroyed Earth’s eco-system. Tell that to some sad bastard who thinks that the
Millennium means something.
Burnley FC were formed in 1882, so in
Greenpeace’s all-encompassing scheme of things, our football club has been around for
nothing more than the blink of an eyelid, yet already we can demonstrate how time can come
around and touch us with a distant tap on the shoulder. In 1921, 39 years after their
formation, and after a period in the Second Division doldrums, Burnley claimed their first
Football League Championship title. Fast-forward another 39 years, to the 4th May 1960 and
towards the end of another League campaign in which Burnley were challenging for the
League title. It was on this date that a Burnley Express journalist noted that, if
successful, the Clarets would reach back 39 years in time and repeat the success of the
1920-21 season.
Fast-forward another 39 years, and we arrive in
the present – the year 1999. If that same Burnley Express journalist had, on 4th
May 1960, speculated on the Burnley he would find thirty-nine years later, do you think he
would have come anywhere near to the position we now find ourselves in? Most probably not,
for the Burnley Football Club about to embark on a third century of competition represents
an incongruous jumble. Plying their trade in only the third division of English football,
yet within an all-seated, corporate-boxed Turf Moor. Recent history, too, seems to mirror
these extremes. A goal away from non-league status one year, and then party to the last
great people’s occasion at a terraced Wembley Stadium the next.
What does it tell us, then, that we can, in two
39 year cycles of history, link the sepia-tinted images of Halley, Boyle, Watson and the
rest of that Championship-winning side of 1921 with today’s Clarets, in their shiny,
mass-produced shirts and an all-seated Turf Moor? Perhaps it really does underline what
the Greenpeace leaflet was getting at - how quickly we can now change things, whether it
be green fields to motorways or terraces to stands.
But doesn't it tell us something else? That
there is, in those old dog-eared photographs and grainy black-and-white newsreels,
something we should cherish and could learn from the past? In the words of one of
Sky’s football promotions, football is supposedly the "new religion". This,
of course, is utter nonsense, but I suppose we could look upon the era of the Premiership
as being something akin to a kind of evangelical revival. So then, are the new high
priests being faithful to the holy traditions that they have procured via the cheque book?
My contention is absolutely not.
One particularly distressing trend is the
viewing of football clubs as businesses rather than as living parts of communities. Let's
get one thing straight - football clubs don't exist to make money. Through an especially
popular competitive game, football clubs represent communities of people, provide identity
and in some cases have become focal points in the very existence of those communities and
in the lives of their inhabitants.
Football is organic. It unifies people with
their surroundings and in doing so it opposes many of the forces of modern life which work
to divorce people from nature and which lies at the root of the widespread instinct that
we have become spiritually homeless. It is through the grainy image of Freeman's goal at
Crystal Palace in 1914, of McIlroy's last-minute shot rebounding agonisingly off the post
in Hamburg, of Ian Britton's ecstatic celebration in 1987 with a tumultuous Longside in
the background that we can grasp the organic unity of a football club and its historical
link with its people.
And, as the tree adds a layer to its trunk with
every passing year, so does the football club add a chapter to its history with each
passing season. Such is the nature of time and memory, that each individual fan has their
own starting point within this history. There is always such a stark contrast between your
era and that beyond your time of reference. You cannot help but think of it in this way
– a bygone age and a contemporary history, an absolute and unbreachable line between
the history of the Clarets before you first saw them, and then everything else that
followed.
My first game at the Turf, witnessed as a six
year-old on the Bee Hole End, was a 3-3 draw with Orient on 9th October 1976. I
can make sense of everything that’s happened since then. I can visualise it, feel it,
understand it as part of me and my life experience. But before this date, I’m
hopelessly floundering. I just can’t grasp it in the same way. The Clarets of 1975
– of Waldron, Morgan, Hankin, Collins, Summerbee – are as distant to me as
Halley, Boyle and Watson.
Yet I know all about this history – about
the championships, the relegations, the cup finals, the star players, the strategic
mistakes – and the fact that I have this knowledge is perhaps the best illustration
of what I’m getting at. That the power of identity resides in rich comprehension: of
what a football club can communicate of a town and of what a town can communicate to its
club. The memory of the deeds of Freeman, Beel, Potts, Adamson, Miller and Coates, passed
down through generations of Clarets, preserves this comprehension, this spiritual element
that links past glories with future hope.
I might not be able to fully grasp the enormity
of what Burnley achieved in the past, but I can remember the stories first told when
knee-high about the magnificent team of the early 60’s. I can look at the old photos
of Bert Freeman wheeling away after scoring the winning Cup Final goal, and I can proudly
cast my gaze down the irrefutable list of honours that the club has earned down the years.
This past beyond me is brought into life.
With this in mind, it is warming to the heart to
see some Claret legends finally honoured in the new Turf Moor, for their efforts shout to
us from the pages of history with an intensity that grows with each passing year. To be
sure, our past is as much of a resource as any share issue. It may not have any material
form or intrinsic financial value, but as a source of motivation, determination and
inspiration it can hardly be bettered. It certainly couldn’t have a price attached to
it. And what a legacy we 21st century Clarets have been bequeathed!
What greater honour could there be for
today’s players, management and fans than to vindicate the proclamation of Jimmy
McIlroy in 1960 that he played for the greatest club in England? This proud statement
became a distant and almost absurd testament as the club slipped into Division Four and
then nearly out of the league altogether. But after the Orient Game of 1987, I had cause
to think that I was observing a shift in the attitude of Burnley fans towards their club.
That game made us realise that we didn’t love the Clarets because they were great.
The rediscovered passion of Burnley fans for their club bore the realisation that the
Clarets were great because we loved them. We had beautiful colours, a proud past, a fine
stadium, and, once more, thousands of passionate supporters.
We realised this when, at around 5pm on 9th
May 1987, the final whistle sounded and we knew the Clarets were safe. At that moment,
trophies, championships and silverware were about as far away as once could imagine. This
was about the survival of a loved one, and Burnley, thank God, were still there for us.
From that moment on, there was a collective determination that we would always be there
for them.
But time, as always, continues its inexorable
quest, and today we find ourselves quite rightly focused on the future, determined that it
will be a bright one. The general consensus seems to be that the club has been transformed
internally, though the talk of share issues and the like still worries me. The tendency of
the financially rich to be tempted to think that money can solve everything is mere hubris
in the world of football. To capture and regulate within economic equations all that
obtains in football is simply impossible, and thus dangerously complacent. What is a
football club if reduced to a mere share price? And make no mistake about it –
that’s what Burnley Football Club will precisely be to the financial institutions who
invest money at the Turf.
All these things will work themselves out in the
future. For now, I’d be happy if we all kept in mind the lessons of the past –
whether you can remember Burnley before the War or whether you’re too young to know
about the despair of the Fourth Division. History tells us that if we are always there
with belief in the Clarets, they’ll always be there with faith in us. On that note,
my Claret friends, I’ll sign off with wishes for a very happy, healthy and prosperous
New Year to you all.
