Dancing in the Aisles

Ian Moore - scored the late winner

Then Ian Moore scored. Completely unexpected as it was, the raw delight amongst the travelling faithful was unconfined. We all jumped out of our seats and celebrated with strangers. Or at least, those of us fortunate enough to be seated jumped out of our seats. Plenty of other people hadn’t actually been lucky enough to get a seat in the first place.

Bradford’s expectation of the travelling support and the reality were wildly, embarrassingly and dangerously different. Apparently their ‘intelligence’ told them that around 2,200 supporters would make the trip. Well, I don’t know where their ‘intelligence’ came from, but I sincerely hope we aren’t relying on the same sources for news of the next terrorist plot. If so, we’ll all be dead.

The fault, you see, clearly lies with the Burnley support. If the best part of 2000 unexpected guests hadn’t decided to take advantage of a pay on the day game within 30 miles of our home ground for a game of critical importance to our destiny, there would have been no problem. This is despite fact that 2500 Burnley fans, having got there in plenty of time to greet the players as they came out to warm up at ten past two, appeared to have a premonition that Bradford’s strategy might backfire.

So, they were standing in the aisles, at the back, and in front of the Burger Bar, when Ian Moore scored that winner. Some Burnley fans apparently missed it, having been escorted round to the home sections of the ground only for the authorities to be surprised when it kicked off. They were hastily removed again.

This could have got really nasty. We ended up with about 7 stewards and a gangway a yard wide separating rival fans down the side – about as useful as a chocolate fireguard had there been a spark between those fans. As for the overfilling of the enclosure, I suppose we can be thankful in one sense that there wasn’t terracing. I’m a big advocate of a return to standing, but faced with such irresponsible attitudes to safety, that overcrowding could have resulted in a crush. As it was, had there been a need to evacuate the upper tier – the concept of a fire at a football ground ought not be too alien to Bradford police – the authorities could have ended up with blood on their hands. And we haven’t even spoken about the delays getting people into the ground.

Anyway, enough about that shambles. Had the event been properly managed, all the talk would have been about that unexpected late goal and the phenomenal support afforded to their team by the Clarets’ fans. The great away day followings have become a part of Burnley folklore, but even so this was remarkable. How many times has a team come out to warm up and seen a crowd that size awaiting them?

It’s time to use a few clichés now. The fans sucked that ball into the net at the end – the noise emanating from that corner of the ground all through the match gave the players that extra boost to keep going even when things were not going their way. We were – here’s another – the fabled twelfth man. Fans can sometimes underestimate the impact they can have on a match. Think back through all the last gasp victories you can think of – I’ll bet they were invariably preceded by an atmosphere to lift the roof. A couple of examples off the top of my head: Bristol Rovers at home in the promotion season, when Glen won it late on; Fulham at home in our first season back in division one, when Glen again was the match winner.

It’s interesting that both those examples came at the Turf. There’s loads of talk at the moment of the low-key atmosphere at home games. It’s not because people don’t care; we proved that last Saturday. It might be because we’re so far apart, I really don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. But if we could bottle that atmosphere from last Saturday and release it this Saturday, then it could make a big difference.

Dave Edmundson - inherited the result of some bizarre policies

Season tickets have been a bone of contention for some time now, largely as a result of the bizarre policies of Andrew Watson. Dave Edmundson has inherited an almost impossible combination of escalating prices, price discrepancies have emerged between different areas of the ground, topped off by a financial crisis making reductions impractical in the near future. His strategy of offering linked incentives to season ticket holders whilst increasing prices in line with inflation seems to be a sensible compromise, although quite why a season ticket should ever be more than the cost of 23 match tickets (as is the case in the Longside upper tier outside the discount period) is lost on me.

Nevertheless, it represents a pretty fair deal, at least in other areas of the ground. Hopefully it will at least be sufficient to arrest the decline in season ticket sales seen so dramatically last year, and perhaps even to tempt a few to return to the fold. The language of the literature is refreshing too, implying that in the future the common complaints will be dealt with. It adopts a conciliatory tone, effectively asking us for a favour whilst the club gets itself in order.

I’d urge anyone who can afford one to get a season ticket. Whilst we’re at it, get to the game on Saturday. For anyone who was there, whether they could see or not, Bradford was special, despite all the problems. Games like that underline the pride you feel in being a Burnley supporter, and ram home quite how big a gap there would be if the club wasn’t there. The importance of survival in every sense is brought acutely into focus.