In March 1970, US President Richard
Nixon stepped up B52 bombing raids along the Ho Chi Minh trail. It was a desperate throw
of the dice; a sledgehammer to crack an elusive nut. By then, it seemed that the outcome
of the Vietnam War was clear. But still the futile fight went on.
Vietnam had ceased to be a distant conflict tainted with moral and
political incorrectness. The horror of the thing had begun to make a more personal impact.
Al made that difference.
Al was an American student on a year’s exchange. He came to
our University in October 1969. It was a year’s reprieve. For his Draft number was
almost up. As the year progressed, so did his wretched anguish. He talked quickly and
slept badly. On the night before the game, I kept him company while he indulged the former
and coped with the latter. Our cheap fags and cheaper coffee helped see us through. After
I had left home, football had become a suspended passion. So, I had mixed feelings when
Dave disturbed my abbreviated sleep, offering me my first trip to Turf Moor.
Dave was a West Brom fan and like all true fans, he’d clocked
others’ allegiances. He’d noted my lapsed faith and being keen for some company,
he’d dangled, no, prodded his invitation. Besides, he had his new banger to show off.
It was a foul day. Dirty, ragged clouds rolled in from the Irish
Sea, dragging with them curtains of rain. On the motorway, we were a bit off the pace.
Other traffic hissed by, showering us with derisive spray. The car heater was knackered
and the smearing wipers weren’t much better.
We were cold, even before we stepped out into the blustery wind
that propelled stinging, spiteful rain into our screwed-up faces. It didn’t seem like
a good start. But I liked Burnley immediately. It looked welcoming, tucked into its
sharp-sided Pennine Valley, beneath the drab, and darkened moors. The scars of its past
were unmistakable. However, its industrial blight, the derelict mills, the canal and the
abandoned marshalling yards were not at all museum-like. This was a lived-in place, solid,
honest, straightforward and friendly. Totally unlike the poncy artificiality of those
Cotswold villages.
Well, if you’re going to flaunt one stereotype, you might as
well give another a good kicking. But my liking of the town’s stone-built terraced
houses seemed genuine enough. The inhospitality of the weather somehow increased their
homeliness. The inviting light from their front rooms, their flickering fires, didn’t
take the piss. No, I saw them as refuges from the surrounding bleakness. In short, this
was a place I knew I could happily live in.
I realised that the club was a declining force and my first glimpse
of the ground seemed to confirm this. True, a new seated stand had been constructed behind
one goal, but the southern flank was a burnt-out demolition site. The rest of the ground
had a fifties’ austerity feel, too. But it had been my field of dreams for all of my
adolescence. Now, it was no longer a distant fancy. And yet my first reactions were fairly
flat. But upon hearing the chanting, my spirits began to stir. This was the real stuff.
Not the ironic fare I was used to. New repertoires had emerged since I had lost touch.
There were bastardised versions of Hey Jude, Mony Mony, Na Na Na Na, Kiss Him
Goodbye now supplementing the staple diet of Let’s Go, Bread of Heaven,
You’ll Never Walk Alone and In My Liverpool Home.
The kids seemed harder. It wasn’t so much their narrowed,
rolled-up jeans, their Bovver Boots, their insect-like shaven heads or their scarves, tied
to their wrists. None of them wore coats. Christ, they must have had reptilian circulation
systems. I was deeply, deeply impressed.
Harry was no longer in charge. He had been pushed
‘upstairs’ as general manager, allowing former captain and favourite son Jimmy
Adamson, to take over team affairs. Harry’s move had been made in order to keep
Adamson at the Club. After all, Adamson had something of a reputation as a coach. He had
been schooled for the England job to follow on from Walter Winterbottom, after the Chile
World Cup. Adamson had apparently spurned that opportunity, preferring to extend his
playing career. So, the post was offered to Alf Ramsey. I sometimes wonder whether Adamson
ever regretted his decision. But was he made of the right stuff? He always impressed as a
dedicated, principled man, but did he have the mental tenacity and the tactical nous to
achieve World Cup glory? Somehow, I doubt that.
The team had changed dramatically from the one I had previously
followed at a distance. Only full back John Angus remained from the Championship-winning
side. Adam Blacklaw, Gordon Harris, Andy Lochead, Willie Morgan and Willie Irvine had all
moved on and Brian Miller had retired, the victim of a knee injury sustained in 1967.
However, the show of young talent was still running. Stevie Kindon
and Dave Thomas were the newish kids in town, complementing established homegrown stars
like Ralph Coates and Brian O’Neil and astute signings like Frank Casper and Martin
Dobson. Kindon and Thomas had graduated from the youth team that had won the FA Youth Cup
in 1968. It was small wonder that Adamson was bubbling about his gifted youngsters.
What’s more, they had done him proud in midweek, securing a 3-3 draw at Old Trafford.
Thomas’s performance had been singled out.
Not that Adamson’s pre-match euphoria affected the early
exchanges, for West Brom went into an early lead, thanks to Jeff Astle’s skidding
strike at the Cricket Field end. This prompted some inane chanting. ‘Zigger, zagger,
zigger, Astle is a nigger’.
Of course, racism was rife then. Popular TV sit-coms, like Till
Death Do Us Part and Love Thy Neighbour helped to confirm discriminative
attitudes, while disingenuously professing to parody racial prejudice. And in the vanguard
of racial prejudice there was football. During the fifties and sixties, there were few
black supporters and fewer professionals. Remember (as Enoch Powell was keen to tell us),
that this was a time of rapid immigration. It was often reported that many football
coaches did not rate British black players, castigating their alleged lack of commitment.
I wonder whether, as a young hopeful, Pele would have been offered terms by a British
club? Certainly, black players were then conspicuous by their absence. I once saw lame
comedian Charlie Williams (a former Golden Shot compere), play in Doncaster’s
defence during the late fifties. But I don’t remember seeing another black player
until South African Albert Johanneson appeared on Leeds’ left wing in the mid
sixties. When Bermudan striker Clyde Best made his mark in West Ham’s front line in
the early seventies, the home crowd greeted him with a version of the Cadbury’s Nut
Chocolate ad. This was the one with the reggae tune. The Hammer’s version went
something like, ‘We bought Clyde Best and covered him with chocolate. Ooo!!’ It
was, in all probability, meant to be affectionate, but it smacked of honorary white
sentiments. Was the chant suggesting that Best’s blackness was only a veneer? Perhaps
I’m reading too much into this.
Anyway, the Longside’s brain-dead baiting of Astle did little
to draw me back into the fold, whereas the Claret’s furious efforts were more
successful in calling upon my dormant passions. Stung by Astle’s goal, Burnley set
about wresting control from the Baggies. ‘Bomber’ Brown, John Kaye and Bobby
Hope began to concede the sodden midfield to the flitting Coates, the masterful Dobson and
the terrier-like O’Neil. Increasing pressure became applied to West Brom’s
suspect defence.
Stevie Kindon was in ‘runaway sideboard’ mode. Making
light of the heavy conditions, he continually powered his way in from the left, through
spattering mud, surface water and despairing tackles, launching muscular assaults on the
opposition’s goal. The crowd tired of their heckling and rose to the onslaught,
carrying me with them. Urging, yelling, groaning and gesticulating. What was happening out
there mattered as much as anything had mattered.
Suddenly, the promise was fulfilled. Arthur Bellamy broke through
on the left-side of the Baggies’ box and lashed home a fierce, rising drive. Level!!
Only Dave was a spectator in this leaping, straining, heaving tumult, with their jabbing
gestures of defiance. Vociferous, vindicated joy. The gloomy afternoon tingled.
The rain grew in intensity as an early dusk descended. The glare of
the floodlights was reflected in the muddy pools which had appeared all over the pitch. As
the second half progressed, the game became, quite simply, a trial of strength. It was one
in which Burnley’s youngsters proved themselves to be the more determined. By the
time that Kindon’s slithering long-range effort had evaded a thicket of legs and
found goal, neat football had become abandoned. The ball had become a mortar. The object
became to propel it as far forward as possible and then pursue it with dogged
determination. Hacking it clear of the puddles and mud seemed to require Herculean power.
I felt exhausted by association.
The crowd continued to urge Burnley forward, hurling encouragement
and invective with equal measure, but the Clarets could not find another way through. It
didn’t matter. By then, West Brom had lost their way entirely. And so it came to pass
that my brittle abstinence was shattered. I became a born again football junkie.
Back at the University, Al surveyed my beatific smile and
Dave’s clamped moroseness with curiosity. ‘So, what is it with you guys? You
both go out in search of a good time. One comes back as if he has seen the Second Coming
and the other as if he’s been cleaned out.’ ‘It’s football, Al’,
I explained. ‘This is what it does.’ ‘I think I’ll stick to dope,
then,’ he replied. ‘A 50 percenter doesn’t sound too enticing to me. If
I’m looking for a good time, I like to be more certain that the odds are in my
favour.’
