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This was the day that police and all motoring organisations advised people to stay indoors. Sometimes being a Burnley supporter defies all logic and good sense, especially when this was a team yet to win an away game, and here we were travelling 250 miles for the privelege of seeing what we kind of assumed would be a draw at best.
By now this was one of the long-distance away fixtures that we had done most, the first some years ago when Portsmouth clinched promotion, the second in the Prem season and now this one. During all that time Portsmouth have demonsrated how not to run a football club; and it is one of football's miracles (or controversies) that they still exist.
It was a chance too to meet up with Steve Cotterill again, the Portsmouth manager. He had been touchingly generous to Burnley a week earlier when he had been the SKY pundit at Turf Moor. Strange how football works and the affections of supporters; here was the manager who oversaw Burnley's big winless run, and yet I am convinced he will be given a huge welcome back at Turf Moor when he comes with Portsmouth. What it means is that fans recognise a man who would never stitch them up or stab them in the back. Some managers profess honesty, but aren't. At Burnley, whatever his achievements, you never doubted Cotterill's sincerity.
Down at Portsmouth he had done well since the beginning of the season. They endured a dreadful and chaotic tour of the USA, came back and had a very poor start to the season, looking odds on for relegation; but then Cotterill, with some shrewd signings, steadied the ship and got them into a healthy mid-table position not that far from the play-offs.
Anyway, the journey was all for nowt when Portsmouth called the game off. The snow came down with a vengeance, the little farm lane at the end of which we were marooned, was impassable, and all we could do was walk in the snowy woods, watch repeats of Lewis, and play endless games of ludo. To make the latter more interesting the new rule was putting 2p into the kitty every time you got knocked off. First suggestion was £1 a time. Thank God I said no to that one, the first game would have cost me £26.
It was of course no surprise to see England's bid for the World Cup booted out. By all accounts Putin had it all stitched up so off to Russia the FIFA fiddlers will go in 2018. Who cares that this is a place run by gangsters and is a sort of state mafia? Bribery and corruption is endemic. Blatter and his gang should be right at home. Raise objections, step out of line, criticise, and you stand a fair chance of being bumped off. Russia was a reasonable prediction. But Qatar in 2022 was just mind boggling. Imagine playing the FA Cup Final in Bacup and you have some kind of idea of the insanity of the thing. At least the cricket kept us warm, how wonderful to come down each morning and see the Aussies being well and truly stuffed. It had the same effect as seeing the Man U 7 Blackburn 1 score the week before.
After the games played, Burnley slid to 8th and Leeds leapfrogged the Clarets into the top six. It made the forthcoming Leeds game all the more significant plus a pack of clubs below Burnley all ready and eager to assist the Claret slide still further.
There's something about a game against Leeds United that does draw out the beast in many Burnley fans. There's a particular satisfaction when they lose and there was utter delight when they suffered penalties and relegations. It's more than just a Yorkshire Lancashire rivalry; it seems to stem from a longstanding deep dislike and for that you have to turn the clock back not just to the seventies, but even before that. On more than one occasion there were games described as "battles"; the referee called both teams together in '65/66 which was known as "The Battle of Turf Moor" it was so appalling. It was a game so savage that it could never happen today simply because so many players would be sent off and the game would be abandoned. Johnny Giles versus Gordon Harris, Andy Lochhead versus Jack Charlton; Brian O'Neil versus Billy Bremner… this was X certificate stuff. In the Press there were confrontations between Harry Potts (the mildest of men) and Don Revie.
But it wasn't just against Burnley; Leeds were willing and able to kick any club off the field in those days. Everton seemed to bring out the worst in them as well, oh and Arsenal, oh and… I could go on and on. But in the seventies there was real animosity between Jimmy Adamson and Don Revie; plus Bob Lord and just about all the Leeds boardroom. Ray Hankin and Gordon McQueen were never best friends. Frank Casper can barely speak Norman Hunter's name to this day. It's a topic that often comes on the Burnley messageboards - just what did Hunter do to Casper at Elland Road?
Mrs T and me (we lived in Leeds and still do) were just feet away from the tackle that Hunter made on Casper. Casper had already released the ball and crossed it into the middle; he was actually a foot or so off the pitch behind the goal line when Hunter came in and just took him out. What I remember though as clear as day was the look on Hunter's face, a look of vitriol and then a sort of 'job well done' smirk as he jogged away with Casper sprawled on the deck. It was the game that Burnley won 4-1 but then days later lost the FA Cup semi-final against Newcastle. Casper was patched up for the game but his career was as good as finished, although he attempted a come-back much later.
Matchday, December, 2010: a rise in temperatures, the meltdown of the ice and snow that had gripped the north and Tony Adams now managing in the wilderness of Gabala, Azerbaijan, coming out with an almost funny football one-liner.
"It's not perfect but it could be worse, we could be in Burnley," he said, and there it was writ large in big black letters in the Daily Mail. Having seen Burnley at its worst several times on drab, damp, dull, leaden days with the surrounding areas submerged in a blanket of soggy, wet mist; and having seen far too many defeats since the beginning of the year, it was difficult not to almost laugh. The venerable Jimmy Greaves said something almost similar many years ago, and that you don't mind. But from Adams it was a bit rich.
"Six games in 23 days will shape Burnley's season," said manager Laws. It was reasonable to surmise that those 6 games would shape Brian Laws' future as well. There was nothing in Wikileaks to suggest how near he was, or how close he had been already to being asked to step aside this season. But it did reveal the story that with just 5 games to go at the end of 2009/10 he was given a 5 game ultimatum. Win four and Burnley were safe and he was safe. Win three, maybe Burnley would be safe but he was safe. Win two and it gave BFC a difficult decision. Win just one or lose all five and it was goodbye Brian. It was reported that Wikileaks boss Julian Assange was wanted at Turf Moor for questioning. Wikileaks also revealed that behind the scenes at Bolton, Owen Coyle was not too chuffed at the prospect of losing players in order to reduce the bills. "Not what it said on the tin," he allegedly muttered in the canteen to a picture of Nat Lofthouse. Wikileaks added that he had been warned to look at the small print at the bottom of the tin before leaving happy Burnley. Google:
The Swiss Ramble: Why Bolton Wanderers Have So Much Debt
And read a fantastic breakdown of the state of the Trotters finances.
The snow was gone for the Leeds match and a 2-3 defeat. The feelings of people after the game as they headed down the stairs and across the car parks were fairly clear. There was real anger. Waving fingers and furious gestures were aimed at the dugout. Yet again a 2-goal lead was squandered and it was as if there were two Burnley teams that took the field. In the first half, team one won 2-0, a little fortuitously perhaps but nevertheless with some good football, along with effort and some style; but in the second it was a nondescript side with far too many non-performing players that was played off the park and run ragged.
Two things decided the result of the first half; the first being a glaring miss by Leeds in the very first minute that would have put them in the driving seat, and secondly a remarkable second Burnley goal that was the result of a massive, aimless, industrial clearance from Carlisle that miraculously found Rodriguez several miles away somewhere on the M65. Rodriguez won the chase against the defender and calmly scored. It was a goal totally out of the blue the like of which I have never seen before; from Carlisle's boot in the penalty area and into the net at the other end in 5 seconds.
Could this be a 4 - 0 thumping for 'dirty Leeds' (the tag will never go away will it,) we wondered at half-time? The heart said maybe, the head said no. Presumably the players had the same thoughts for as soon as Leeds scored their first, with the scorer gratefully wondering if all the missing defenders had gone down the pub, there was almost an inevitability that they would go on to win the game. At 2-1 Iwelumo missed a glorious chance to score but headed wide with a thumping header that would have broken the net had it gone in. Instead it went wide. Sorry, but Harry Redknapp's wife could have scored that one. You knew then how it would all end - and it did.
The Leeds hordes surged forward at pace over and again. I swear they had at least 15 players out there. The Burnley midfield was simply swamped and cut to pieces. The struggling Carlisle and Andre 'Mr Cool' Bikey in one of his 'let's-give-the-fans-a-heart-attack' modes had no answer. Leeds dug into their reserves of everything that Burnley lacked; passion, guts, inspiration, motivation and DESIRE. The more they were up for it, the less Burnley challenged them and the more ragged they got.
Behind us were groups of Norwegian Clarets, and behind them Swedish Clarets. It was bad enough driving back to Leeds. They had to cross the North Sea with the memory of Burnley's defence (and I use the term loosely) standing off and allowing Leeds' Howson to take the ball from near the halfway line, leaving Carlisle for dead, and fire it home from 20 yards. It was a dreadful goal to concede. 4,000 Leeds fans went mental and who could blame them.
The comments at the end were predictable. "This team is going nowhere… this is an average manager… average managers produce average teams… average teams have average seasons… rudderless… panic-stricken… abysmal… embarrassing… over-run with nothing done from the touchline to stem the tide… by the end of the game a non-existent midfield… and a truly dire defensive performance… only Rodriguez distinguished himself. "
Just a few comments tried to be fair to the manager by pointing out that the players at 2-0 up should have been more responsible and capable of defending such a lead. But by far the majority wanted to see action from the Board and Laws replaced. The Leeds guy on the radio said it was Leeds' best 45 minutes he had seen. The Burnley guy said he thought he was watching Accrington Stanley in the second half.
Brian Laws, not for the first time this season, after an embarrassing capitulation, publicly blamed the players saying he was angry at some of the things he had seen. But dozens of fans blamed the manager himself for not seeing the second-half problems as they developed and countering them with tactical alterations, and saw him as responsible for producing a side that even by December could not win two consecutive games and still had not won away. The telling statistic was just 10 wins from his 38 League games, a win ratio of just 26%. The harsh, bare facts seemed stark and bleak.
Leeds moved up to 4th just two points behind an automatic place and Burnley down to 9th, 4 points behind the top six.
