Sorry a cake is all we have boss

Last updated : 05 November 2015 By Dave Thomas

Money in the bank, Danny Ings money still to come, the points piling up, the win at Blackburn, the new office block nearing completion and Sean D’s big surprise.

Ya Ya Toure didn’t get one for his birthday and had a strop but here at Burnley we know how to be generous with people. If they do good, they get a cake. It took Sean D by surprise, because he wondered if he might get a Rolex. He accepted the cake with good grace then wondered if there might be a Rolex inside. No, he said, just sultanas. Good job he didn’t know that 100 years ago player Billy Watson was given a gold watch to mark his 100th game.

Sean, this is Burnley not Barcelona. In the poorer days of the Wilderness Years it might just have been an Oddie's sausage roll. Even special guests when they are hosted in the boardroom only get fish and chips. The board in fact lashed out on the cake. It was from M&S and then Barrie Oliver decorated it DIY style. The Turf Moor Thrift Stadium has a nice ring to it.  

The inquests on the win over Huddersfield win were plentiful. The mantra seems to be: ‘one day a team will come to Turf Moor and get a hammering.’ The feeling was that it is Huddersfield that should have been that team, but chances were missed, the post was hit, the foot came off the pedal, the coasting began, Huddersfield stepped up their game and we all know what happened next. It was all so close to going the way of other games when there have been 2-0 leads. We knew it was Halloween but these are scares we can do without.

The Monday papers in Yorkshire paid tribute to Burnley’s organisation and being a difficult team to beat.  It’s an apt summary and once again Andre Gray was cited as being the difference between Burnley and their opponents. 

The Yorkshire Post is a reasonably sensible ee by gum paper but Leon Wobschall did the Ginger Mourhino thing without really thinking that these days it is no compliment to be compared to the moaning one who seems at an utter loss as to how to gee up his ailing Chelsea side. But I liked the way he described Sean D as ‘reigning magisterially over the kingdom he surveys in Burnley across the Pennines.’

Wobschall had another nice little snippet: ‘It was Gray in a MOTM showing that took the bouquets this time but if there was any bubbly floating about, you sense he would have shared it with his colleagues. Burnley are that sort of side.’

And then Nahki Wells added his own bit: ‘They are a very well drilled team. Everyone is on the same page and knows their jobs and they do it week in and week out.’

With the win and another three points the question ‘is Sean Dyche Burnley’s greatest ever manager’ might have won a few more yes votes. When last I looked over 60% said yes as opposed to ‘needs more time.’ With that in mind I looked up a name that is huge in Burnley history but because it’s a name way back from 1910 to 1924 it is seldom mentioned. It’s in the history books alright but I’d guess if you sat a dozen people round a table in the pub for a good discussion he’d get few votes simply because he is so long before people’s memories and from a bygone era, but he’d certainly be my nomination.

He was the man who changed the colour of the shirts from green to claret so that every time you bellow ‘come on you clarets’ you honour John Haworth.
He signed Bert Freeman, Tommy Boyle and Bob Kelly, three galacticos of the era.
He won promotion to Division One in 1913.
He won the FA Cup in 1914.
On resumption of ‘normal’ football in 1919 he took BFC to runners-up spot in Division One.
The next season they won the title and set a record of 30 unbeaten games.
In 1921/22 they were third in the table.
Sadly he died at the early age of just 48 in 1924.

All this was in an age without mobiles, fax, texts, emails, computers, laptops, iPads and motorways. They went around by train and John Haworth was secretary, odd-job man, chief bottle-washer and jack of all trades. A trainer did the muddy work. He had a telephone that didn’t always work plus a desk and the Post Office. It was in a Burnley of poverty, slum conditions, bad health, poor diet, low wages and exploitation, the oppression of working classes and a background of us and them. The ruling classes looked down their noses at football and it was beneath middle-class sensibilities because they thought it encouraged poor behaviour. Whilst he was at Burnley producing successful and winning teams Haworth gave the town pride; on Saturday afternoons he gave release and escape to crowds of working men who could take their minds off all their daily troubles. He brought a little bit of colour to an otherwise grey drab town.

Jimmy Mac tells a story about the great Bob Kelly. Sometimes Jimmy would take a stroll round Scott Park and there he would meet an old chap that he used to stop and chat with. His name oddly enough was Bob Lord although it certainly wasn’t THE Bob Lord. Of course they used to chat about football and the old lad was by then in his 80s and could well remember seeing the great Bob Kelly play and used to explain to Jimmy just how good he was. And then he would pause, look nostalgic, and always ended by saying:

‘Thee were a great player Jimmy but then so were yon Kelly. I reckon ‘e were just a bit better than you ‘n all by about this much,’ whereupon old Bob would use a finger on each hand and hold them up about two inches apart.

Fulham matchday: over the years at Turf Moor Burnley have rarely lost against Fulham. But this time Fulham arrived with their strikers on fire. The night damp, misty and grey, the kind of night when we tell ourselves that these southern teams come out shivering and wishing they were somewhere else. 

Jeff Stelling on SKY was quite beside himself telling us that Fulham had not won here since 1951. The words fairly fizzed out of his mouth, grinning hugely as if revelling in Fulham’s historical ineptitude. ’28 attempts since 1951 he began. King George VI was on the throne, Clement Attlee was Prime Minister, the Archers was first broadcast and the average house price was £2.100. And Newcastle United won the FA Cup. Yeh, it was THAT long ago.’

We were in the 1882 and the Bob Lord for a change and it was hard to remember a time when we’d sat there and seen a win. There was one in Stan’s time I think. But to compensate for that we were on table 13 and 13 has never been an unlucky number for me oddly enough. It was McCormack that was more worrying and Jamie O Hara in midfield for Fulham than some ancient superstition.

A misty fog was slowly settling around the ground but inside the 1882 it was warm as toast and the Baked Salted Caramel Cheesecake was outstanding. ‘Tell chef this cheesecake is to die for,’ I said to catering-maestro Chris Gibson.

‘Ha’, he laughed, ‘we buy it in from Manchester.’

‘Never mind, tell him he slices it beautifully,’ I said the last piece slithering down nicely and Mrs T knocking back the Pinot Grigiot.

Burnley spent the first ten minutes finding their way and Fulham slipped the ball to each other neatly. The view was different for us, this time low down, near the front, up close and personal, seeing players in bone-jarring tackles, sweat pouring off them, making massive efforts and showing huge determination. The runs at speed are breathtaking, the athleticism is clear to see. And all the while we are behind Sean Dyche, the man in black, sipping water, urging, cajoling, pacing, consulting staff, exhorting and encouraging.

You can see how Andre Gray is as strong as a bull, shielding the ball, sticking his backside out so that the defender has no chance of winning the ball and then he’s away before you can blink. It was what Jimmy Mac used to do years ago. Despite two rushed shots, Sam Vokes had his best game for an age, his close control, cross-field runs, the spins and turns a treat to watch. Jones was simply majestic pulling the strings, never wasting a ball, the unsung hero and my MOTM despite Gray’s two goals. Barton has given him a new lease of life. And Barton, here there and everywhere, the cheeky chappie, mopping up, making passes, keeping it moving and of course chatting to the referee.

With that first tentative 10 minutes out of the way Burnley took over and ran rings round Fulham. This was a display of power football, of movement, of pace and incessant pressure. It paid off to the tune of two goals, the first a Gray header from a deep cross. How Gray rose that high to meet it is testament to his power, surrounded by six-foot giants. His second was a blistering shot low along the ground from 18 yards latching onto a superb through ball.

The 1882 buzzed at half time as we warmed up and thawed out. 2-0 at half-time was a dream of a scoreline and the quality of football was exceptional. When we play like that, there’s not a team in this league can live with us, said the guy sat next to me.

In the second half the cross bar cruelly denied him of a hat trick when he chipped and pinged. A Vokes header was heading like an arrow to the top corner until from nowhere a defender cleared from just under the crossbar. Another Gray shot whistled just over the cross bar.

But groans and furrowed brows appeared before that.

McCormack scored early on. Somehow the ball was worked into the Burnley box and there he was to slam it home. Fulham spirits were lifted, now it was them in the ascendancy but even so the best chances fell to Burnley. It became end to end, nip and tuck as the minutes ticked by and we willed that clock to hurry home with Heaton now earning his bonus.

Boyd was replaced by Matt Taylor, Gray by Long. The Fulham aerial onslaught was contained by Duff and Keane. Everybody dug in and slowly bit by bit the Fulham efforts diminished. By now Arfield was getting back into the game more and more and it was from him that Burnley’s third was contrived. It started with a contested throw-in on the right with Fulham defenders incensed they hadn’t won the throw and still haranguing the linesman after the final whistle. The ball came over to the left, Arfield pinged it in and the next thing we knew was that the ball was nestling in the Fulham net and Matt Taylor was racing away into the corner arms raised jubilantly.  Arfield had slipped the ball across and there he had been to sidefoot it home.

After the game: the 1882. Barry Kilby brings Andre Gray for his MOTM presentation and the memory this leaves is the unfailing smiling patience of the guy as he stays behind for as long as people want to come up, shake his hand, have programmes signed, take photographs and give him a hug. He was so close to a brilliant hat-trick. The arguments begin as to which of them is the better striker, Gray or Ings: Phil Bird likens him to an early Ian Wright. Only months ago he was in the Conference. The media still likes to label him the £9million striker but whether it was £6million or £9million it was money well spent. From our normal perch in the upper James Hargreaves we just don’t see how strong these guys are and the punishment they take.

Something else we noticed from these unaccustomed seats was just how Matt Taylor plays with a smile on his face. More than once he looked across to Dyche with a quip and a laugh. Nice teeth we noticed too, the other day. A survey by the University College London undertook a study of footballers’ teeth from eight clubs and discovered that on the whole footballers’ teeth are in a poorer state than those of the general population, including infections and gum disease and this could be affecting their performances on the pitch.

Let’s face it; do any of us concentrate on work if we have a raging toothache? One in five footballers has suffered teeth injuries during a game. 37% of footballers had at least one tooth affected by decay. 75% of footballers needed fillings.  More than 25% were sensitive to hot or cold drinks.

A great night then and a worthy win. It’s the best we’ve played this season said Sean D. Someone came up with the headline or strapline, Fulham beaten by two shades of Gray and a Matt finish. Whoever thought of that deserves a bonus.