Next Game - Reading (away)

Jamie Cureton

The last time they won promotion was in 1994 along with Port Vale and the Clarets and a year later almost made the Premiership in a dramatic play off final against Bolton. They were second in the league but chose a season when only one went up automatically but the following season were struggling at the wrong end of the table.

The downward slide continued until the 2000/01 season when they made the 2^nd Division play offs before losing out to Walsall at the Millennium Stadium. They went one better last season finishing second and coming up automatically.

They are one of the more fortunate clubs in the league with a benefactor in John Madejski although the current financial climate has even had an effect and there have been no new signings since promotion was won other than the recent signing of Fulham’s American goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann. The Seattle born keeper was signed by Fulham from Colorado Rapids and has won three caps for the USA. He has also played for Rochdale in a loan spell. He has though only been signed as cover.

Sammy Igoe

Two of the goals this season have been from the penalty spot and Reading have already suffered three defeats with a solitary win at home to Sheffield Wednesday. Derby, Coventry and Leicester are the three sides to have taken maximum points from them with Coventry achieving it at the Madejski.

The last of those defeats came last Saturday when they went down 2-1 at Leicester City’s Walkers Bowl. They were 2-0 down after just five minutes with a Cureton penalty on 22 minutes completing the scoring.

The Reading team for the Leicester game was: Phil Whitehead, Graeme Murty, John Mackie, Adrian Williams, Nicky Shorey (Alex Smith 81), Nicky Forster, Kevin Watson, Andy Hughes, John Salako, Jamie Cureton, Martin Butler (Tony Rougier 74). Subs not used: Phil Parkinson, Joe Gamble, Marcus Hahnemann.

It will be the third time the Clarets will have played at the Madejski and all three will have been midweek games meaning that some Burnley fans will still not have had the opportunity to visit this impressive stadium. The previous two visits have ended in draws with Andy Payton the only Burnley player to score there.

The Clarets were still floundering in the 4^th Division and had just been as close as ever to getting out (upwards) in 1990/91 but were beaten in the play off semi-final against Torquay. We had relied heavily for goals on Ron Futcher but he left the club that summer.

Manager Frank Casper made three summer signings bringing in Steve Harper from Preston, Steve Davis from Southampton and a little known striker from Reading by the name of Micky Conroy.

He had started his career with Coventry before returning to his native Scotland with Clydebank and St. Mirren before arriving at Reading in 1988 for a £40,000. He didn’t play all his games up front for Reading but he didn’t over impress and scored just 7 goals in 72 games before Frank splashed out £40,000 to bring him to the Turf.

His impact was immediate and he started the season with goals. It was Conroy who scored our first goal of the season in a 2-1 defeat at Rotherham and then after scoring in a League Cup tie at Wigan he found the net in the first home game against Aldershot.

The Aldershot goal was expunged from the records when they failed to complete their fixtures and although he scored two goals in the next game at Doncaster it was November before he was to score on the Turf, by which time the manager who had bought him had left the club to be replaced by Jimmy Mullen.

That goal came in a 3-1 win against York and was the start of a run of five goals in four games as the Clarets pushed their way to the top of the table. People were even talking about him scoring 20 league goals in the season but this seemed unlikely. Nobody had achieved that since Willie Irvine 26 years earlier, he had scored 29, and although there had been many pretenders they had all fallen short of the magic figure.

The goals kept coming and in January he hit a hat-trick in a 4-1 win against Gillingham. It was the third Burnley hat-trick of the season following on from Roger Eli and Graham Lancashire and with twenty games left he now had fourteen goals.

There were four more before the end of the season and of course a 4^th Division Championship medal to go with them as the Clarets stormed back up the league into the new 2^nd Division.

The following season he scored just 6 in 39 games as Adrian Heath took centre stage and reached 20 himself. I’m sure Heath would point to the contribution of Conroy for his career best goalscoring season.

That was to be it though and as the next season got underway he was out of the side and was quickly sold to Preston. Many said he wanted to go whilst others said Mullen had forced him out. The way he talks to this day about his time at Burnley suggests the latter but Deepdale it was.

He was successful at Preston and then at Fulham before his Football League career came off the rails at Blackpool. He is now in Australia and is manager of Melbourne club Western Suburbs.

He will always be remembered at the Turf though, his goals helped the Clarets finally get out of the 4^th Division after seven long years.

The programme introduced a new Burnley player in John Mackie that none of us had heard of at the time. They had given him our number 23 shirt and we could only presume it was the Berkshire way of spelling Matty Heywood. As it turned out he was Reading’s number 23 but they had moved him into our squad but he wasn’t called into action by either side.

Into action, the truth is that nobody was called into action in a game that was so bad and boring that this space has had to be filled with comments on the match programme because there really is nothing to say about the game.

Even the presence of that most ridiculous of referees Kevin Lynch couldn’t brighten up the evening and the only certain thing was that the final score would be 0-0. Neither manager could find anything positive to say about it at the end other than the fact that they had both collected a point.

I suppose, to uphold tradition it is best to give the teams which were,

Reading: Phil Whitehead, Andy Gurney (Stuart Gray), Phil Parkinson, Andy Bernal (aka A Complete Thug), John Polston, Barry Hunter, Graeme Murty, Darren Caskey, Jim McIntyre, Nicky Forster (Paul Brayson), Sean Evers (Neil Smith).

Burnley: Paul Crichton, Dean West, Steve Davis, Mitchell Thomas, Gordon Armstrong, John Mullin, Micky Mellon, Paul Cook, Glen Little, Andy Cooke (Graham Branch), Andy Payton (Alan Lee). Subs not used: Lenny Johnrose, Ronnie Jepson, Chris Brass.

Referee: The ridiculous Kevin Lynch (although to be fair he did send Paul Stewart off at Barnsley).