Winning the League is exciting, gratifying; being cast out is a miserable experience that bonds poor, committed fools. But avoiding relegation is the deepest, richest sensation. After nine months of skirmishing and scrabbling, often on the edge of the precipice, it means you have stayed alive, you still belong. Burnley boast the single-season record for remaining unbeaten (30 successive games, 1920-21) and are one of only two teams in the Football League (with Wolves) who have won every division (and therefore own an extensive relegation portfolio). So older supporters were fully entitled to wear 'Been There Done That' T-shirts.

Equally appropriate was the choice of music from The Great Escape which blared out at Turf Moor on Saturday as relieved Burnley fans stormed the pitch after a 2-1 victory over Plymouth ensured Second Division survival. They had to win to stay up. A gaggle of visiting supporters huddled under the stand, staring inconsolably into the abyss of relegation. These communal outpourings of emotion, almost tribal in complexion, are the football supporters pleasuredome. "We'll get drunk tonight, one way or another," said a Burnley stonemason before the game. "Either in celebration or commiseration."

Nestling in its own quiet valley 30 miles from Manchester, Burnley infuses its community with undying loyalty to the boys in claret and blue. No Manchester United replica shirts are seen in the area, and 19,000 people turned up on Saturday, a quarter of the town's population. Influential opinion-forming people support them. Prime Ministers' press officers (Alistair Campbell, Sir Bernard Ingham), tabloid editors (Stuart Higgins, The Sun) television controllers (Peter Salmon, BBC 1) and weathermen (John Kettley). If you are unhappy with the rate of income tax, overblown celebrity revelations, the transmission time of EastEnders or your rain-ruined Bank Holiday barbecue, blame Burnley.

You can even blame Burnley for the Labour government, if you so wish. Campbell, Tony Blair's press secretary, bumped into Higgins at the Brentford-Burnley encounter a few days before last year's General Election. Rupert Murdoch had already talked with Blair, but it was at that match that the Sun's support for New Labour was finally pledged. "Stuart and I had a chat and they ran the story the next day," said Campbell, and crucial floating voters were swayed.

Campbell is the epitomy of a Burnley fan, a highly intelligent man who becomes a jibbering wreck when the fate of his beloved team is at stake. Blair knows it, and sent a message to the club before Saturday. "You have to win," the PM demanded in the Burnley Express, "if only because Alistair Campbell will be unbearable if you don't."

A home and away regular, Campbell was mortified to be absent last weekend in Brussels at the European summit on the single currency. At least his children were able to supply regular score updates on his mobile phone. "I wanted to cheer when we took the lead, but obviously I couldn't. I had to look as if I was taking a call from a journalist." His office at No. 10 (the one at the front with the bow windows) is adorned with pictures of the team, including one of his son as the club mascot, and he claims to come across Burnley fans everywhere. "At the world summit in Rio, the manager of our Copacabana hotel was a supporter, so was an American who recognised Tony and me walking to the UN building in New York." Another, the winner of a regional competition who came to Downing Street, has changed his surname to Burnley by deed poll, had not missed a game in 20 years and has even christened his daughter Clarette Anne Blue.

Watching Saturday's do-or-die scrap, seeing players making desperate scything tackles and chasing until they almost dropped, my thoughts turned to cricket, particularly as a lame-looking Lancashire League game was visible adjacent to the stadium. How county players and supporters could be stimulated by this frenetic struggle for survival. Last weekend, there were numerous football matches of such dramatic potency up and down the country, each one affecting a crucial up-or-down issue. In cricket, you come across this kind of intensity once in a blue moon. What an opportunity the first-class game missed by rejecting the two-division option last year. It might have even got the Prime Minister interested.

Reproduced for the Clarets Archive by Jez Wilson.

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