Does thee want a brew?

Last updated : 18 November 2015 By Dave Thomas

It was a return home for Andre Gray brought up within minutes of Molineux and on their books until he was 13. It was a return for four Clarets, Jones, Ward, Kightly and Vokes who all featured in the 2009 Wolves side. For Tom Heaton it was his 100th consecutive league game.

And on the Wolves side was the reformed Kevin McDonald brought to Turf Moor by Owen Coyle and forever remembered for his half-time disappearing act in the game against Man City in the downpour. Today he says he is a more mature person and that his trip to the pub was blown out of all proportion and it was ludicrous anyway to say he had been to the pub.

Wolves hadn’t been too clever of late but over the years their record against Burnley on their home patch has been good with 7 wins out of the last 10 meetings.

It was a rare event in fact, a 0-0 draw after which the standout  and briefest summary of the game was simply: ‘if this was the day you chose to redecorate the spare bedroom rather than go to Molineux, then you made a good choice.’

At the beginning of the season Mrs T put it on the list of games that we would go to. We didn’t; new windows and paying for them became the priority. But here’s a test of honesty. They fitted them a month ago and still haven’t sent the bill.  What do I do?

I scanned the reports and the messageboards. By all accounts not a lot happened in the game once the Remembrance Day silence had been observed. In the first half Burnley had some shots; in the second half Wolves had some shots.  Nobody scored and everyone went home many thinking what a waste of an afternoon. Sometimes there seems not a lot more you can write except that after the game suddenly to everyone’s surprise, the lawnmowers started up.

Much was made of the flat, dead turf with the grass being long enough to warrant cutting after the game. Dyche himself made a point of mentioning it. Did the Wolves manager want long grass to stifle Burnley’s game? It turned out that he did saying later he wanted to affect the speed at which Burnley broke and by that presumably meaning the balls played through to Andre Gray.

Was this underhand gamesmanship or super-professionalism and attention to detail? There is the story that at Burnley years ago manager Brian Miller had the pitch deliberately flooded overnight by leaving the sprinklers on so that the game the next day would be postponed. A local referee was summoned early in the morning who cancelled the game. He cottoned on immediately to what had happened and said er don’t be asking me to do this again will you? 

By coincidence in the week I’d been to visit Roy Oldfield who had been groundsman at Turf Moor for a long period between 1972 and what Roy thought was something around 1992. Roy is in his 80s now with lots of memories and what I hope in the coming weeks will be a few tales to tell.

It’s a fascinating period in Burnley history including relegations and promotions, the Celtic Game, the Orient game, managers like Adamson, Potts, Miller, and John Bond, Chairman Bob Lord and then John Jackson, and all of the Wilderness Years.  

1972 and Roy remembered it like it was yesterday when Burnley manager Jimmy Adamson walking in Scott Park asked him would he be able to come up to the house to talk about doing some work. Roy was a gardener at Scott Park much preferring the outdoor life to the pit where he had once worked long, back-breaking hours.

Gardening could be long and arduous too, but in glorious weather under sun and blue skies there was no comparison with the stooped, dusty, choking and claustrophobic life underground, if a life is what it was. Down the mines he dug coal in the semi-dark; at Scott Park he dug flower beds in the fresh outdoor air, looked after the rose and shrub beds, and tended the herbaceous borders and the lawns. It was the best swap he ever made he says and the good job he did there was quietly noticed by the Burnley manager.

Scott Park was one of Burnley’s four flagship parks; it had been gifted to the town by businessman Alderman John Hargreaves Scott who willed a sufficient amount of money to develop a park for the benefit of the Burnley people. When Burnley Corporation acquired the Hood House Estate it was decided that this would be the place where a park could be created that complied with Scott’s wishes.  It opened in 1893 but the official opening was two years later when it was dedicated to the people of Burnley. And how they needed these green spaces as somewhere to find escape from the grimy back-to-back terraced houses in which they lived and the drab streets and the endless, low-paid toil in the factories and mines.

1972 was a transitional year at the football club. At the end of season ‘71/72 the club had finished in seventh place following relegation the season before. Season ‘72/73 would see a return to the top flight. Adamson had certainly felt fierce antagonism but Lord had stuck by him. As he walked his Scottish Terrier round the park the gardeners were never short of a quip or two, usually good-natured, recalls Roy and he would often stop and chat about the team and the results as the season progressed. The end of season ‘71/72 had seen a run of several consecutive wins. The banter became more good natured.

‘We’d pull his leg about some of the results,’ said Roy, ‘but one morning he asked me could I call round at his house after work as he had a job for me. “A little job,” Jimmy said.’

So, assuming it would be something and nothing in Jimmy’s garden, at 5 that day Roy downed his tools, cleaned up and set off for Jimmy’s house.

‘But what he said when I got there astonished me,’ said Roy. ‘How’d you like to work at Turf Moor as groundsman,’ he asked me. ‘It was totally out of the blue, the last thing I expected to be asked.’

‘But I know nowt about being a groundsman,’ he answered almost lost for words and completely taken aback, whereupon Adamson assured him that he’d learn all there was to know from the guy soon to retire, John Jameson.

The next step was to meet Chairman Bob Lord for his approval and to sort out a wage. Roy remembers thinking that he’d be a bit crafty and take old wage slips to show him that included overtime so that Lord would see that he was on a good wage that he would at least have to match. They talked about things for a while and Lord gave only a cursory glance at the wage slips. Lord then sat back in his resplendent pomp and nodded.

‘Right then,’ he said, ‘we’ll give thee a do, ay we’ll give thee a do.’

It might only have been a second or two that Lord glanced at the wage slips but he had missed nothing and of course he had spotted that what Roy had showed him was more than just the basic wage. ‘And by the way,’ he said as Roy was leaving, ’I saw them wage slips included overtime.’

Roy stopped in his tracks. ‘But we’ll see thee right,’ Lord added with a faint grin.

‘He missed nothing,’ said Roy, ‘and in all the time I knew him he never missed anything; always had his facts right. In all the years I knew him he was good to me. If you worked hard you had nothing to worry about. It was if you slacked then he was onto you straightaway.’

It was agreed that Roy would begin as assistant groundsman learning the job from John Jameson.  Well over 40 years later he still laughs at Lord’s words that he repeated again: ‘and by the way, them wage slips includes overtime on ‘em – but we’ll see thee right.’ Roy thought it was funny then, and still does.

Bob Lord did see him right and Roy Oldfield has nothing but good memories of him – except for the mug of tea he made for him the first time he ever went to Lord’s house to do some work.

‘He had this huge bungalow and two fiercesome Alsatians; they frightened anybody and everybody that ever went to that house. The first time I went I was absolutely terrified by them but his daughter Barbara had them under instant control so in I went. Bob showed me round, told me what he wanted doing and then asked, ‘Does thee want a brew. Ah’ll mek thee a brew.’

‘That’ll be grand,’ I said, ‘and stood and watched him making this mug of tea. There were no tea bags he just spooned spoon after spoon of tea leaves out of a grey packet, probably Typhoo, and spoon after spoon went in. It was the worst mug of tea I ever tasted, so strong you could have stood a shovel in it never mind a spoon. Somehow I managed to drink some of it whereupon Bob asked me, “how was that then, alright for thee?” I could hardly say it was awful so I mumbled that it was a good brew and then managed to get rid of the rest of it when he wasn’t looking. After that it was always Barbara that made me a brew when I was up there.’

The tale that Bob Lord sacked Roy for not watering his tomatoes rang no bells with him. It was Jimmy Adamson who told this story in an unpublished magazine article that years later appeared in the Adamson book, The Man Who said No to England.

‘The story that Bob sacked me for not watering his tomatoes at his bungalow is a bit fanciful. I think Jimmy told that story after he and Lord parted company. It was at Gawthorpe where there was a big greenhouse that we grew them and after he retired Lord spent more and more time at the club and Gawthorpe. We grew carnations and he loved to pick one for his button hole. Something else he did was to pick a Eucalyptus leaf and then rub it between his fingers under his nose and say, “Tha’ll never need medicine if you smell this.”’

‘Maybe it was a lad called Ian Rawson that was sacked and that was in trouble for the tomatoes. I do know that Bob lord did eventually sack him when he caught him at Turf Moor cutting the grass and the lines weren’t straight and Ian had been larking about doing them in a zig zag pattern if I remember rightly. Bob had been watching him for a while and if you didn’t work and do your job right then that was it, you were sacked.

‘Once the new stand was built along Brunshaw Road, the one they named after him; Bob regularly used to stand at the top of the steps near the directors’ seats and just watch us working. Many a time when I was out on the pitch seeing to things I’d see him standing there with his arms folded, just watching, watching us work.’

‘Most of my work was at Turf Moor but maybe one day a week I’d help down at Gawthorpe and always remember setting mole traps with Arthur Bellamy down in the bottom field. We must have set dozens over the years and we had a lot of laughs that’s for sure, but I don’t think we ever caught one. Lovely man was Arthur. He’d been a player at the club and a coach and then somehow found himself on the Gawthorpe ground staff round about the time John Bond arrived. Bond was just one of the many people I worked with.’

‘What wonderful times I had over the years thanks to Jimmy Adamson and his surprise request that he made. There were nearly 20 years of drama and excitement and meeting some of the great football people, Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Kevin Keegan among them; and of course a procession of Burnley managers one of them being Harry Potts.  I can honestly say they were among some of the best years of my life, but some of the worst as well when there was the Orient game when we could have gone out of the Football League that day. It’s nearly 30 years ago and those of us that were there were will never forget it. There was the Celtic game when there was the riot and so much violence that people were truly afraid for their safety. There were promotions and relegations with emotions that ranged from celebration to despondency.’

‘There were so many things that happened but on the very first day when I started work at Turf Moor inside the stadium with not much more than a mower a spade and a fork, I looked at the chaos and rubble of the old Brunshaw Road Stand that had been demolished and the new one still hadn’t been built, and I thought:

‘What the ‘eck am I doing here?’