Most of this generation of Claret signings would all be gone by the end of the season, their mission accomplished: Burnley consolidated in mid-table and the finances in considerably better shape, thanks mainly to their heroic exploits in the 1988 Sherpa Van Trophy. I must confess to having a soft spot for Comstive, mainly because my ridiculous reserves of optimism led me to reason that no-one blessed with such advantageous physical attributes could fail to come good in the end. I waited in vain for him to break out of his subdued shell and reveal the sparkling, aggressive striker that I was sure was lurking underneath. Since I wasn't there to witness his howler of a miss at Stockport, my abiding memories of Comstive remain his header just over the bar at Wembley, and a cracking goal he scored against the Bastards in a pre-season joust, pinging the ball into the bottom far corner from the left, just outside the area.
One of Miller's 1987 signings who went on to become an established member of the first team was goalkeeper Chris Pearce. I had the chance to talk to Pearce a couple of times, once after an embarrassing pre-season defeat at Gloucester City, when I quizzed him about the Board's refusal to consider the offer of financial help from Graham White, of Colne Dynamoes fame - "It's not what it seems" replied Chris, chillingly. The other occasion was when I met him, Comstive and (the then new-signing) John Deary in the Brown Cow pub on Livesey Branch Road, all quaffing beer after pre-season training before the 1989-90 season, telling me that they were so knackered they could hardly lift their pints (somehow, they all just managed it, you know?) Comstive, although still in the squad, was never to play again for Burnley. He just sat in the corner and farted for most of the time. There's probably no connection between Comstive's flatulance and the end of his Burnley career at the hands of Frank Casper, though Casper always did use his bum to talk out of.
One of the things I kept hearing as a schoolboy player when we were winning at half-time was that the opposition would come at you like wild boars on heat (or Steve Kindon chasing a through ball) for the first ten minutes of the second-half, so it was vital to the outcome of the game that nothing was given away during this period. The implicit defensiveness of this always puzzled me, but, as Halifax resumed the second-half a goal down, any fears that they would catch Burnley cold soon subsided, as the game settled into a familiar pattern. It was a fairly even midfield contest, but Burnley always looked comfortable at the back.
The words 'Burnley' and 'comfortable at the back' are rarely used in the same sentence, but this was the first season of the Steve Gardner and Steve Davis (Mk1) centre-half pairing. Gardner (signed, impressively, from Manchester Utd) was a fierce tackler, but was too heavy and lacked pace. Davis, however, was obviously the biz, and I often wondered what the hell he was doing hacking away in the Fourth when he could have been hacking away with more refined players in the Second.
Later on in the season at Colchester, Burnley had stunned us all by fairly roaring into a two goal lead inside 15 minutes. Predictably, Colchester came back with two goals in the second-half, and in a frantic last ten minutes were pushing for the winner. Burnley were hoofing the ball skywards in the general direction of the fragile frame of O'Connell (it was good to see the Clarets playing to their strengths as usual). The situation required a calm head to pass the ball to O'Connell's feet - he had a turn of pace and had shown a keen eye for goal earlier in the season on the rare occasions he had received a decent pass. As Davis came over to defend a throw-in deep in the Burnley half, I shouted as much to him, and he actually looked round at me, nodded and said "Yes, OK."
BLOODY HELL! Was he taking the piss? Or was my advice, proferred in the midst of a fierce battle to save a rare away point, actually a simple but inspired tactical ploy which had shone like a Caramac wrapper on a drizzly terrace? Nah, probably not. But a positive acknowlegment did at least make a pleasant change. The landlord of the Apsley House pub in Portsmouth, a Burnley fan called Jack, went with me to Aldershot the following season on a beautiful Friday evening in April, and during the course of the (abysmal) game offered some brusque advice to Futcher, who promptly told him to fuck off, complete with V-sign, the lot.
Despite Burnley's superiority, the huge, sustained roar that accompanied O'Connell's conversion of Burnley's second goal was testament to the relief that the two goal cushion brought. Despite confidence in Davis and Gardner (remember we'd been used to Billy Rodaway, Joe Gallacher and Phil Malley) no-one was yet comfortable with Burnley's ability to shut up shop once a lead had been established. Sure enough, they let themselves and us in for a nervous last few moments by conceding a goal right at the end. I hovered around the exit gates and legged it as soon as the referee's whistle had confirmed Burnley's 2-1 victory. I had to get back to Blackburn for 6 o'clock to pick my girlfriend up from her works. Fortunately I made it out of Halifax before the rush, and then an hour of bliss: a clear run along that lovely West Pennine route, Sports Report and James Alexander Gordon on the radio, the warmth of the late-summer sun on my arms, and Burnley top of the table with a 100% league record.
Esconced in the Palace nightclub, I had supped enough ale to have a go on the Give Us A Break machine, and, after a preposterous run of lucky guesses which must have been reaching lottery jackpot-winning proportions, I faced a tricky blue into the middle for a fiver. Amazingly, the question was: "Who was the Burnley manager in 1986?" Now this would be bad enough in a pub quiz when you've got time to think about it; I had five seconds and there was a fiver riding on it - a situation I wouldn't wish on Colin Hendry.
I had three options to compute. Option one - Martin Buchan. Appointed at the start of the 1985-86 season, but bloody hell, Paul Fletcher could hang in the air longer than Buchan hung around the Turf. So it couldn't be him. Option two - Brian Miller. A possibility, as Dusty returned at the start of the 1986-87 season. Option three - Tommy Cavanagh.
Ahh...Tommy Cavanagh. Arguably, nothing symbolises more the state that Burnley had got themselves into than the fact that a footballing nobody like Tommy Cavanagh could take the helm for a season. It's no coincidence that he's best remembered as the man whose wife shagged Tommy Docherty on a regular basis when they were both at Manchester United. Vince Overson told me that he went in to see Cavanagh after training one day at Gawthorpe and found Cavanagh in the manager's office wearing a Manchester United jumper. Vince promptly told him to take it off as he found it highly offensive (G'lad Vince!) But it just goes to show what Cavanagh thought of our club. He was, metaphorically, doing to Burnley what Tommy Docherty had done to his wife. However, for the sake of my increasingly jammy run on the quiz machine, the white-haired poltroon it was. The blue disappeared, and a fiver was mine.
So that was the day that was. An average Burnley performance in front of three and a half thousand fans in a neglected Fourth Division ground. But it was also a day rich with memories of people - loved ones, friends and complete strangers, who by the simple virtue of wearing those beautiful Claret and Blue colours indicated a common loyalty. Every football supporter, whether conscious of it or not, has their own particular philosophy regarding their allegiance. It's not surprising that I've made more than the odd reference to optimism and tradition, for these form the core of my own outlook.
A little girl once told G.K.Chesterton that an optimist was someone who looks after your eyes and a pessimist someone who looks after your feet. Chesterton recognised the allegorical truth in this, drawing a distinction between the pessimist - "that dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to moment" and the optimist - "that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice of road".
The allegiance of the true football fan is never in question - this is a matter of primary loyalty. To paraphrase Chesterton, a football club is not like a dingy lodging-house that can be left because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our dreams, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is, the less we should leave it. In other words, once you love a football club - once you establish that primary loyalty - its success is a reason for loving it, and its failure a reason for loving it more. When I stopped going to the Turf in 1985, it was because I had come to stake my loyalty too much with the desire to see Burnley succeed. I was that pessimist who kept his eyes down, fixed on the here and now.
I don't really know why this came to be the case. It can perhaps be partly explained by the anticipation that we all felt about that dynamic young team that came together and gelled so effectively in 1981-82, winning the Third Division title. So many of that team had come up through the ranks, imbued with the Claret and Blue ethos of pride and teamwork, expressed on the field through hard graft and disciplined, passing football played to feet. These young lads themselves expected success, some of them having been in and around the youth team of 1977 that had reached the semi-finals of the F.A. Youth Cup. In 18 months between September 1977 and March 1979, Burnley's intake of young hopefuls had included Brian Laws, Andy Wharton, Phil Cavener, Kevin Young, Vince Overson, Trevor Steven, Paul Dixon, Colin Anderson and Mick Phelan, who all in varying degrees played a part in that promotion.
During the following season, however, circumstances contrived to thwart the consolidation of that team's success. The disastrous era of Bond and Benson ensued, and Burnley very quickly found themselves in the Fourth Division with no money and, Ashley Hoskin excepted, with no decent youngsters. Given such a situation, there was only one way my pessimism was going to lead me, and that was away from the Turf. I had focused on the most obvious thing that beheld me - that Burnley were a desperately poor team of (mainly) journeymen professionals managed by incompetent outsiders. I had no optimism, no "power of vision" to see that underneath the disastrous consequences of John Jackson's ego-trip and the flagrant mismanagement of Bond, Benson and Cavanagh lay the same football club, suffering and monstrously ravaged.
I wonder what would have happened if Burnley had secured their safety before the Orient game in 1987? I have a sad feeling that the town would have breathed a brief and private sigh of relief, and then gone on with its usual business. Instead, fate dealt Burnley a dramatic hand. Having lost at Crewe in the penultimate game of the season, the referee having inexplicably blown for full-time after only 87 minutes, Burnley were bottom of the Football League and had to win their final game to stay up.
It was only at this 59th minute of the eleventh hour, when the consequences of defeat were crystal clear and so stark, that me and thousands of others placed our pessimism to one side and once more made our way to Turf Moor at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Burnley were uncomfortably perched on a double-edged sword. They could either fall through the trapdoor into the oblivion of part-time football, or they could open and climb through a new window of opportunity.
History will record that Burnley did the latter. But as well as securing Burnley's league status, the occasion of that day did something else. It made pessimists like me lift up my head and take my eyes off the ground. The sight and sound of a full and passionate Turf Moor roaring on one of the poorest-ever Burnley teams initiated the birth pangs of a reborn optimism - the insight to realise that we didn't love the Clarets because they were great, but that they were great because we loved them. That we wanted them to be successful was obvious, but we were made to see that success was no criterion on which to give support or take it away. The Orient game was a unique occasion because the fantastic support given that day was nothing to do with Burnley winning trophies or gaining promotion. Silverware wasn't important - we just wanted Burnley to still be there for us. Our side of the deal was that, henceforth, we would be there for them.
As well as the optimism which informs a greater loyalty than one conditional on results, I also cherish the idea of tradition. I don't accept for one minute that a keen awareness of tradition hinders forward-thinking. If anything, it bolsters it. You can only assess the present by recourse to the past, by learning its lessons. The glories of the past serve to motivate those involved in the present-day struggle, to fuel ambition and to assess progress. The hardship of the past generates determination and pride. As I write (Feb 97) Burnley are established in the top quarter of the old Third Division, still well below what is expected by many supporters who remember Burnley as a fixture in the First Division. Even for those of us who never saw Burnley in the top flight, is it too much to expect that a club with the support, resources and facilities of the Clarets cannot survive in the Second Division? As we see clubs with similar turnovers spend three-quarters of a million pounds on one player, we often muse on the fact that Burnley have never spent even a half of that amount in a similar transaction.
The reason for this lies in the club's fiscal policy, determined by the chairman, Frank Teasdale and his board. Teasdale has been chairman since the mid-1980's and saw first-hand the disaster that the reckless speculation of John Jackson brought. He is determined that Burnley will never go through that trauma again, and so it seems that progress must be organically generated. Purchases are balanced against spare cash and anticipated transfer income. Burnley must carve success out of the hard realities of financial pragmatism. If an initial reaction is to see this as hopelessly unambitious, how would we feel if Burnley risked three-quarters of a million on one player? Certainly anticipation, but most likely a fair amount of apprehension too. One definite problem with tradition is that in using the past to illuminate the present, we can sometimes miss what is genuinely new. In some instances (the Bosman ruling, for example) complete breaks with the past are unavoidable and universally recognised. Other types of change, though, are not so clear cut. With this in mind, how do we view Burnley's continuing under-achievement in the light of Murdoch-mania? Does not success in these days of Sky Sports and pay-per-view seemingly generate a not inconsiderable proportion of the required revenue to compete at the higher level? Do not the rewards more than recompense the speculation required to achieve it?
Here, unlike Bosman, there is no clear judgement. Murdoch is no benevolent chairman who's in it because he loves football. He's in it for his own naked and unbelievably insatiable ambition. What happens when he focuses his millions on something else? He'll toss football away like a used condom. To go completely down one road or the other - either unbridled, speculative expansion or excessive timidity is without question a risky venture. Our present board, like the majority of clubs, appear to be attempting a middle road. In the 1994-95 season, Burnley were relegated having spent more money on players than all but two other clubs in their league, but even this could not guarantee our status. It's a difficult conundrum. Hunger for success is one thing, but over-indulgence can have fatal consequences. A tradition does not guarantee anything; Clarets know this more than most fans. But tradition informs us with at least one unshakeable conviction - Burnley do not belong in the Third Division.
Phil Whalley, April 1997
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