 |
Date and Place of Birth 13th February 1949 - Prescot
Transfers to and from Burnley from Stoke City - July 1978 to Newcastle United - December 1974 (£120,000)
First and Last Burnley Games Sunderland (h) - 16th August 1969 sub: replaced Dave Thomas
Wolverhampton Wanderers (a) - 14th December 1976 sub: replaced Billy Rodaway
Other Clubs Stoke City ---------------------------------------- Newcastle United, Everton |
Burnley Career Stats
| Season | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Others | Total | |||||
| apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | |
| 1969/70 | 5(2) | 1 | - | - | 1 | 1 | - | - | 6(2) | 2 |
| 1970/71 | 30(1) | 3 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | 31(1) | 3 |
| 1971/72 | 11 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 11 | 1 |
| 1972/73 | 32(3) | 6 | 2 | - | 0(1) | - | - | - | 34(4) | 6 |
| 1973/74 | 42 | 9 | 6 | - | 3 | - | 8 | 3 | 59 | 12 |
| 1974/75 | 3(1) | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 3(1) | - |
| Total | 123(7) | 20 | 9 | - | 4(1) | 1 | 8 | 3 | 144(8) | 24 |
Profile by Tony Scholes
The summer of 1968 saw Burnley pick up a young player who had been released by Stoke City. Geoff Nulty had failed to break through into their team despite having been tried in a number of positions.
He'd started as a centre half, been played as a centre forward, but eventually had settled into a place at left back in their reserves. Stoke boss Tony Waddington however had made the decision that the young Nulty wouldn't make it and let him go.
It was in the same summer that Burnley snapped up Martin Dobson from Bolton on a free transfer, and as was the case with Dobson's signing the capture of Nulty did seem something of a strange one.
His first season at Turf Moor was spent playing reserve team football where he again played in different positions. He didn't look to be close to the first team but in August 1969, on the second weekend of the new season, he finally made a debut when he came on as a substitute for Dave Thomas in a 3-0 win over Sunderland.
The 1969/70 season didn't bring him too many first team games but in his few appearances he did score twice. The first was in a League Cup replay win against Rotherham, his first start in the first team, and in November, in his first league start, he scored the equaliser in a 1-1 draw against Manchester United.
Although the goal wasn't captured on film it was from the game featured on the 'Team of the Seventies' video released by the club a few years ago that showed George Best scoring the Manchester United goal.
The 1970/71 season was to be the season when he got his real break in the first team but it was a difficult season that saw Burnley's twenty-four year run in the First Division come to an end.
Nulty played in various positions during that season but after relegation settled in at left back but was again mainly playing reserve team football. And things didn't appear to get much better for him when Jimmy Adamson signed Keith Newton during the summer of 1972 to play in that very position.
The 1972/73 season proved to be a special one for Burnley FC and also for Nulty. He started the season out of the team but with the sale of Dave Thomas to QPR in October he won a regular place.
He hardly seemed the likely replacement for Thomas but his inclusion in the side worked perfectly. He played in a midfield alongside the brilliant and graceful Dobson (that other surprise free transfer) and Doug Collins whose passing ability was second to none.
Nulty could get box to box, he won headers, he was the player who so often won the ball back and he scored more than his fair share of goals as he got into the box so often. Probably today he would be described as the perfect midfielder.
He scored six league goals during that promotion run, a season that saw us lose only four times as we lifted the Second Division Championship. A year later he scored nine league goals in the top flight when he played in every single game.
He'd become such an important part of the side and he was inches away from what could have been the most important goal he'd have ever scored for the club. With the score 0-0 in the FA Cup Semi-Final against Newcastle he smashed the bar with a header. It was so unlucky and I'm sure had it gone in would have seen us on the way to Wembley.
We won only one point from the first three games in the 1974/75 season and after the third game, a defeat at Ipswich, he was left out. Again the links with Dobson were there. For the next game both were missing with the hostile Burnley crowd abusing Bob Lord with the news that Dobson was to be sold to Everton at the sort of price it had cost us to pay for the new stand in the chairman's name.
Nulty stayed, but was dumped back in the reserves. He made just one more first team appearance, coming on as a substitute for Billy Rodaway at Wolves. That was just two weeks before Christmas 1974 and by the time the turkey was carved he'd been sold to Newcastle for £120,000.
He'd missed out on Wembley in the 1973/74 season and the same happened to him in his first full season at St. James' Park. This time he did score a semi-final goal, the winner in the League Cup against Spurs, but before the final he suffered a fractured jaw in an FA Cup tie at Bolton and was ruled out of the game at Wembley.
Joe Harvey had signed him for Newcastle but in the summer of 1975 he was replaced by Gordon Lee who had moved from Blackburn. It was Lee who came back in for him when Newcastle were relegated to take him to Everton in a £40,000 deal where he found himself once more in the same midfield as Dobson.
He spent two years as a player at Goodison but it came to an end in March 1980 with a horror tackle from Jimmy Case in the Merseyside derby. It caused extensive knee damage and brought Geoff's playing career to an end at the age of 31.
He remained at Everton on the coaching staff and was also Lee's assistant manager at Preston for a period before he opted to pursue a career outside the game after gaining a degree in social sciences at the Open University.
Geoff Nulty's first team career at Burnley was just over 150 games, but his value to the side during those two brilliant seasons when we won promotion and went on to just miss out on both the FA Cup Final and a UEFA Cup place cannot ever be underestimated.
I've never quite understood why he was left out so quickly in the following season, particularly with Dobson being sold. Geoff Nulty had an awful lot more to offer Burnley Football Club.