Leighton James

The Hall of Fame Number 11 – Leighton James

Date of Birth: 16th February 1953 Place of Birth: Llwchwyr Burnley debut: Nottingham Forest (h) 21st November 1970 Other Clubs Derby County Queens Park Rangers Swansea City Sunderland Bury Newport County

There aren't too many players who get the chance to play for the Clarets twice, very few three times but today’s induction into the Hall of Fame is Leighton James and he played for the club in four different spells.

Leighton, or Taffy to give him the name he was known as at the Turf, made over 400 appearances for the Clarets. The first of them was as a 17 year-old whilst he was 36 when he played his last game.

That debut came in November 1970 when the Clarets were well and truly struggling at the bottom of Division One. Like Willie Irvine before him he had already won a full cap for his country before making his club debut when he played for Wales against Czechoslovakia in Prague one of 23 caps he won during his Burnley career.

That club debut was the first home win of the season at the tenth time of asking and was the season when we lost our First Division status after 24 years. Taffy played in just four of those league games that season.

After relegation he soon won himself a place in the side. He came in for the injured Steve Kindon on the left wing at Fulham. He turned in a man of the match performance, scoring both goals in a 2-0 win and was in the side for good. So much so Steve moved on to Wolves at the end of that season.

He was inspirational a year after in the promotion season when he was an ever present and reached double figures in goals and some important goals too with the winner at Sheffield Wednesday coming quickly to mind. He was still on 20 when the Clarets returned to the top division and he was again in tremendous form as we started well.

Many would call him arrogant and they are probably right. Around that time, unable to wear his contact lenses under floodlight he was asked if in fact he could see the ball. "No", he said, "I don’t need to though I can smell it."

After two excellent seasons back in the top division he looked to have lost form in the early part of the 1975/76 season. In fact he was unsettled because he knew Burnley were going to sell him to raise money. He was right and he moved on to League Champions of the previous season Derby County managed by Dave Mackay.

We’d seen players go before but could never have believed that less than three years later he would be back just in time to win an Anglo-Scottish Cup Winners medal in Harry Potts’ team.

He’d moved on to QPR from Derby before returning to the Turf but he wasn’t quite able to reach the heights he had as a youngster and couldn’t inspire a Burnley side that was heading for the 3^rd Division for the first time in the club’s history.

He didn’t go with us though and went to play for the one club who probably meant more to him than Burnley, the club he had supported as a boy Swansea City. They were on the up and a year later his goal at Preston helped them into the First Division. History was repeating itself with another Deepdale finale eight years after we had clinched the 2^nd Division title there.

After a spell at Sunderland he dropped into the 4^th Division with Martin Dobson’s Bury and then back to South Wales with Newport before he answered an SOS from a desperate Brian Miller in the summer of 1986 and came back to Burnley for a third time.

It was the nightmare season of the Orient game and although no longer the force he had been he did turn in some good performances and enabled us to pick up points that helped to keep us in the league. He was certainly not the player of old though and at the end of the season, along with many others, he was released.

That looked to be the end of him as a player and in fact he accepted the position of Youth Team Coach after failing to find himself another club as a player during the summer.

But incredibly, despite having been released at the end of the previous season, he found himself back playing and playing in the centre of defence as cover for injured captain Ray Deakin.

In fact over the next two seasons he played in a total of 45 games including a cameo role as a sub at Wembley in the Sherpa Van Trophy Final. He was axed as Youth Team Coach when Frank Casper returned as manager and at the end of that season, 1988/89, he was released and his long association with Burnley Football Club was finally over.

He had given great service to the club, he without doubt thought the world of the club, and at his peak was as good as any winger in English football. Many supporters of the Leighton James eras, particularly his first, name him as their all time favourite player.

He was an all round sportsman too and was an extremely competent batsman when it came to playing cricket. He played for both the town’s Lancashire League clubs, starting at Lowerhouse and later at Burnley and he is the last to play both football and cricket at the two Turf Moors for Burnley.

But as good a batter as he was he will be remembered for his football and there was without doubt something very special of seeing an on form Taffy in the number eleven shirt terrorising the opposition’s right back.

He returned early in 2003 to make the half time draw, celebrating his 50^th birthday. Just the same Taffy as I always remembered and still able to recall just about every game he played and every goal he scored.

He is for certain a very popular induction into the Hall of Fame.