Blond Bombshell is special guest

Last updated : 25 April 2003 By Tony Scholes

Andy Payton will be on the pitch before kick off surely receiving a superb reception from the crowd along with Paul Cook but at half time it is the turn of former centre-forward Ray Pointer who will be making the half time draw.

Pointer was the goalscoring sensation of the team that won the Championship, has scored more league goals post war than any other Claret with 118 and one of just three with Jimmy McIlroy and Andy Lochhead to have gone past the hundred.

He missed out on 20 league goals in the Championship season, he netted 19, but in the previous season he had scored 27 a total bettered only once by Willie Irvine post war. He also hit 22 and 25 in the two seasons after the Championship giving him a total of 93 league goals in four seasons.

Pointer’s role though was not just as a predator, he was the all action centre-forward who would chase the ball from start to finish but there was no doubt he had the ability to find the net.

Andy Lochhead and Willie Irvine were both pushing for places in the side but Ray was still banging in the goals until he got injured towards the end of the 1962/63 season. He chipped a bone in an ankle and he was never able to win a regular place in the side again.

There were just thirteen league appearances over the next two seasons before he was sold to Bury for £8,000 in August 1965. With a lower division club he certainly found his goalscoring touch. He was only with four months and scored 17 goals in 19 games before they sold him to Coventry for £20,000.

Another good spell at Coventry followed but as the Sky Blues were set for promotion to the 1st Division Pointer was sold to Portsmouth, now aged 30.

Incredibly he had six years at Fratton Park culminating in an emotion charged return to the Turf at the age of 36 when he was in the Pompey side against the promotion chasing Clarets.

He was involved in coaching for a number of years and was in fact youth team coach at the Turf, brought in by Harry Potts and he stayed for five years before moving on to Bury.

His 118 league goals came in just 223 games and today at 66 the big crowd favourite of the early 1960s is still guaranteed a great reception from the Burnley crowd.