PAUL MCGEE 

Date and Place of Birth 19th June 1954 - Sligo   Transfers to and from Burnley from Preston North End - November 1981 (loan) returned - December 1981 from Preston North End - March 1982 (£25,000) released - May 1983   First and Last Burnley Games Wimbledon (h) - 7th November 1981   Queens Park Rangers (h) - 10th May 1983 sub: replaced Kevin Young   Other Clubs Sligo Rovers, Torquay United, QPR, Preston North End ---------------------------------------- Dundalk, Sligo Rovers, Galway plus other Irish clubs

Burnley Career Stats

Profile by Tony Scholes

You could say Burnley were recovering from a dreadful start to the season in November 1981 when manager Brian Miller brought Republic of Ireland striker Paul McGee to Turf Moor on loan from Preston North End.

An agreement had been reached with Preston North End and their manager Tommy Docherty that we could make the deal a permanent one after the initial loan but a change of manager at Deepdale meanwhile made things more difficult.

A midweek win against Chester City had just lifted us out of the bottom four in the old third division, just, and that win had taken our run of unbeaten league games to six games, albeit with four of them draws.

McGee went straight into the team at the expense of Steve Taylor, who was somewhat unfortunate to be left out, and we managed a fifth draw, this one was 2-2, in seven games with strike partner Billy Hamilton getting our first and Vince Overson scoring a late stunning equaliser.

Two more draws followed, 1-1 at Reading and 0-0 at home to Runcorn in the FA Cup before McGee started to have an impact; in the next two games he scored four times. He got both in the cup replay at Runcorn and followed that up with two more at Bristol City in a 3-2 win on the following Saturday.

He'd had a somewhat nomadic career prior to his arrival at Turf Moor. He'd started that career in his home town of Sligo in Ireland before trying his luck in non-league football in England with Kidderminster Harriers and Hereford United before moving to Torquay United where he failed to make the first team.

A brief return to Ireland followed with Finn Harps before are return to Sligo. During that period he enjoyed two loans in Canada where he played with Toronto Italia and Montreal Castors.

In 1977 he made another move to England, this time with Queens Park Rangers for whom he scored 7 goals in 39 appearances. That was enough to persuade Preston boss Nobby Stiles to pay £70,000 to take him to Deepdale in 1979 where he'd fallen out of favour under Docherty, Stiles' replacement, leading to the move to Burnley.

It all ended abruptly too. Docherty had gone at Preston to be replaced by Gordon Lee who immediately recalled McGee, confirming that he would not be signing for Burnley. He'd been with us for just a month with those four goals at Runcorn and Bristol City his return in six games.

Meanwhile we continued our search for a striker as we continued our move up the table. At one point we signed Brian Flynn from Leeds on loan to play up front but that ended with a serious injury in his second game.

That led to Miller returning to Preston and this time, in March 1982, we got McGee on a permanent deal for £25,000, and as we marched to the league title he scored five more goals including the crucial only goal as we beat promotion rivals Carlisle 1-0 and two in the 4-1 win at Southend when promotion was clinched, a night when our two other goals came from full backs Brian Laws and Andy Wharton.

With promotion secured, McGee's first full season for Burnley was in the second division but it ended in relegation and in the player being released, a move that ended his career in English football.

In the first week of that season we played two away games, at Bury in the League Cup and the first away league game at Middlesbrough. We scored nine goals in those two games with nine different scorers, McGee's came in the game at Bury.

One week on and he scored in a 4-1 win at home to Carlisle but his next goals didn't come until November when he scored twice at Coventry and once at home to Birmingham, all three in the League Cup.

He lost his place in December after a defeat at Grimsby and when new manager Frank Casper took control in January he was very much out in the cold. He just didn't figure at all until being named substitute for the last home game of the season against his former club QPR.

With a win needed at Crystal Palace in the last game to avoid the drop he watched it alongside Taylor from the stands as we went down to a 1-0 defeat. It came as no surprise when he was released by Casper.

It wasn't the end of his career by some distance and we continued to play for the next eleven years, almost exclusively back home in Ireland, although he did return to Preston in 1984 and play two games.

He had some great success, particularly with Galway where he won the player of the year in 1989/90 and he also created a record for an Irish player in transferring between clubs on a total of 34 occasions.

His playing career ended in 1993 but he's been heavily involved in coaching and has also managed a couple of clubs, the last of them being Salthill Devon, now SD Galway, in 2011.

Overall his signing for Burnley wasn't a successful one for either player or club but we took more care of him - Paul McGee, Paul McGee.