On Saturday 4th April 1987 at Turf Moor 1,874 were watching the Clarets go down to a 2-0 home defeat against Cambridge United. It was the third successive defeat as we looked to be heading towards a drop out of the Football League. There appeared to be no silver lining to our cloud as more and more were turning their backs on the Club.

On the same day at the Victoria Ground, Stoke the visitors made a substitution which would not have been of any interest to those in Turf Moor, not at the time anyway. Brian Horton was the Hull manager, the player coming off was Garry Parker who went on to play for Forest, Villa and Leicester. The player coming on was 19 year-old Andy Payton who was making his Football League debut. I'm sure that some at the Turf that afternoon knew him and knew he was a Burnley fan but not many of us. Did we care? Probably not, after all he wasn't playing for us.

Many of us had hardly heard of him other than a story in the local paper a few years earlier when the local club decided against taking on the local player. Not a problem, how many local lads have ever come good at Burnley? The name of Brian Miller quickly springs to mind. Brian was a good player for Burnley and on this day was suffering with the rest of us as manager of the Clarets. There really hadn't been anyone since Brian who had made it at his home club.

Payton made just the two appearances that season as substitute. Things weren't a lot better the following season as he looked to establish himself at Boothferry Park with just five more sub appearances by New Year's Day. On 3rd January 1988 he finally got his chance and a first start. It couldn't have been much tougher, the opposition were Leeds United. Yes, a Hull City v Leeds United league game in the old second division. There were 14,694 in Boothferry Park to see Hull complete the double over Leeds with a 3-1 win. Do you need to ask, yes he scored, the first. There was a family of Clarets fans celebrating that day even though most of us hadn't noticed. There was just one more goal that season, at Bournemouth in a 6-2 defeat.

His next goal came in another stuffing at Bournemouth, this time 5-1 in the following season. He was only to score four and they came in a four match spell in late November and December. Things were soon to change though.

The 1989/90 season got off to a better start for him with a goal on the opening day of the season at home to Leicester. This was followed by the annual stuffing at Bournemouth, this time 5-4. A poor result, yes, but a special day for the now 22 year-old Payton. He scored his first league hat trick. This season saw him score 17 league goals and I think one of those 17 gave him more pleasure than any of the other 16. The crowds at Turf Moor had increased somewhat and on 10th April 1990 there was a healthy 3,967 watching a boring 0-0 draw against Southend. This was the day of that seventeenth Payton goal of the season and this time I reckon a lot more Burnley fans were interested than was the case when he made his debut. As we left the ground the results were coming through from elsewhere, one of which was HULL CITY 2 BLACKBURN ROVERS 0 and Andy Payton had got the first. I wonder just how he felt that day?

The 1990/91 season saw him break the 20 goal barrier for the first time when he hit 25 in 43 appearances. Payton was now proving himself as a goal scorer and it was inevitable that he would be moving on soon. And so he did the following season, to Middlesbrough. He stayed less than a year before moving north of the border to Celtic. This must have been a dream for him, he scored in the Old Firm game and of course in European games. He had been signed for Celtic by Liam Brady but he was back on the move the following season once Lou Macari had replaced Brady, back to Yorkshire and to Barnsley.

In a three year spell at Barnsley he continued to score goals, and got the winner at the Turf against us in 1994/95. He had scored 41 league goals for Barnsley by the end of the 1995/96 season when he was linked with a move to Burnley. Adrian Heath was the manager and he was looking for an extra striker to add to the three already at Turf Moor, Kurt Nogan, Andy Cooke and Liam Robinson. The rumours persisted for some time (Andy Payton and rumours, now that's a shock). In the end though he moved to Huddersfield and just after the start of the season Heath bought Paul Barnes from Birmingham. Barnes had a good goal scoring record but he did seem to score too many unimportant goals and not enough important ones. Top goalscorers score winning goals whereas others have the ability to score late goals when already 3-0 up or 3-0 down. To be fair though, Barnes did a good job for Burnley.

It was widely believed that Barnes was not popular with Waddle and Roeder and they were trying to get rid of him. So it was that on Friday 9th January 1998 Waddle announced that Barnes was on his way to Huddersfield in a straight swap for Andy Payton. Now Waddle couldn't even get that right, the deal didn't go through on time. Payton was still at Huddersfield and Barnes was not played due to the fact that he was on his way out. We were playing the league leaders, Watford, and we were fighting for our lives. We won it 2-0 though with Andy Cooke getting them both and the following week the swap went through. For those that didn't know Payton was a Claret, the local media were quick to let us know.

He made his debut at Bristol Rovers and we lost 1-0. A week later on the 24th January he made his home debut for the club he supported. We won 1-0 and it would have come more of a surprise had he not got his first Burnley goal. He did though and his goals were soon to become very important. As relegation became closer and closer, on four successive Saturdays we played Grimsby Town, Northampton Town, Bristol City and Fulham. These four teams ended the season in 3rd, 4th, 2nd and 6th positions respectively. Although all but the Northampton game were at home we were expected to lose all four. We actually WON all four, all by one goal and the winning goal was scored by Andy Payton on all four occasions. That's what I mean about scoring important goals.

We stayed up, just about, with a last day win against Plymouth Argyle. Waddle left to be replaced by Stan Ternent. Looking back at Waddle's time at Burnley it is quite astonishing that he signed Andy Payton. The signing of Andy must have been just about the only thing he got right.

It wasn't much better for the Clarets under Ternent and only an eleven game unbeaten run saved us. Even then we only finished with three points more than the previous season. For Payton though, he scored 20 goals for the second time in his career. His goals had kept us up again.

Season 1999/2000 was to be a special season for Burnley and for Andy Payton. His first Burnley hat trick came in the home game against Colchester United. This was followed by a second in the last game of 1999 against Oxford. At Wrexham he scored his 200th career goal. He hit his highest total of goals in a season, getting 27 and won promotion to Division One. His hat trick against Oxford was the last Football League hat trick of the last century and his third would have been the last goal but for a late start at Millwall. Not many will know but he also scored the first Football League goal of the 1990s, for Hull City against Sunderland.

This season has been a stop/start time for him with a broken toe delaying his start and then a hamstring injury. Even so he still has eight league goals and fourteen in all (at 25th January). His eighth league goal came in a 2-1 win at home to Barnsley in what was his 400th start in league football. He has also had to contend with lots of rumours about his private life and a string of transfers. We at BurnleyCISA.com don't want you to leave Andy, we reported that you had left because we had been told that you had from a very reliable (or so we thought) Turf Moor source. We are delighted that you are still at Burnley, we want you to continue to score goals for us.

Congratulations Andy "The Natural Born Claret" on reaching 400 league starts.

Below is Andy's league record since his debut in 1986/87 until 20th January 2001

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