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Everyone would have wanted to be there. The queues outside Turf Moor would have stretched down past the cricket club - if only we, rather than Watford, had got the break that day. There would have been thirty thousand people purporting to be Clarets who would have made the journey to, say, Villa Park for the game.
The effect could have been massive. That was the time, remember, when things started to go wrong - performances went rapidly downhill, and crowds went with them. The interest that that one goal in one game could have generated could have earned the club a few extra season ticket holders for this
campaign, and could have kick-started the club at the point where we started to stall.
But on such twists of fate does football hinge. For all the games which are played week in, week out, there are particular games which play pivotal roles in determining the next few years in the life of every club. Play-off finals, relegation deciders, the first game in any manager's reign at a club, big cup matches - all can make or break the future of a club.
As Dave Edmundson takes up the post of Chief Executive at Burnley, he will probably accept that much of what will decide whether he is judged a success or a failure will be entirely out of his hands. If Burnley can produce some sort of magic in the cup this time around once more - and this is not beyond the realms of plausibility - then Edmundson may get the natural boost to gates that he so desperately needs. Similarly, a big injury list, and the club - and Edmundson - may find itself in an impossible situation of the
field.
As it is, attendances at Turf Moor and other financial constraints effectively left us unable to field a team on Tuesday night. We might have found eleven players, but at least one of them should have been left at home for an early night. As for the subs bench, it was a write off from the start.
Edmundson's job is to somehow break what is becoming a cycle of decline. This season, and to a degree next, are all about ensuring that there is a Burnley Football Club in the future by rationalising the business whilst maintaining first division football. The trouble is that many more results like Tuesday's, and the leaking of support will become a major haemorrhage. That will not make the process any easier.
Perhaps Edmundson's background as a teacher and broadcaster, rather than an accountant, will hold him in good stead for the precise job he needs to undertake. About ten thousand of the faithful will turn up whatever the weather. But there are another six or seven thousand fans out there who have been regularly over the past five years. The task is to re-engage with as many of those as possible. His knowledge of the media, and his simple knowledge of ordinary football fans from the school yard, may help him find a level with those people that his predecessor was unable to locate.
But these skills can only achieve so much. Creative marketing can take you a little further. But the overwhelming truth is that you cannot sell your product if it is unattractive. The biggest marketing force in English football are that because they have been the dominant team for the past ten years as football has exploded. It is, firstly, because they have been successful.
Somehow, Stan, Barry and Dave must find a way of producing a football team capable of matching the attacking qualities of the current crop with a useful defence and a bit of back up. Then they must find a way to make people jump on the bandwagon. Success breeds success; it's an old saying but it's true. And as I said about Andrew Watson, a chief exec earns his money when he has to achieve his target against the odds.
But in order to reach that goal, he will need a bit of luck. He will need, somewhere along the line, the players to create something that he can take to the floating masses and offer them. Something, maybe, like a speculative winner in a dreadful cup tie at Watford.