Let’s ‘ave a brew, tales from the groundstaff at Burnley Football Club

2 Bob Lord makes a brew

1972 and Roy Oldfield remembers it like it was yesterday when Burnley manager Jimmy Adamson walking in Scott’s Park asked him would he like to come up to the house to talk about doing some work. Roy was a gardener there much preferring the outdoors to the pit where he had once worked long, backbreaking hours.

Born in 1934, he left school when he was 15 in 1949 and in the last few months at school the lads due to leave visited various places to look at possible work on offer. One such place was Bank Hall Pit at a time when there were still plenty of job opportunities down the mines. He went with a group of lads like him all due to leave school and signed on at Bank Hall for a 16-week introductory period during which the lads could see if they fancied this work or not. Roy remembers it was the wages he fancied and being underground seemed like a big adventure. Half of the 16 weeks were spent underground and the other half on the surface. At the end of it he signed on quite happily.

The first task he was involved with was driving a tunnel through from Bank Hall to the pit at Towneley, a 2-mile stretch with the job being sub-contracted to Wimpey and it was to ease coal extraction from the Towneley end.

Back then there were something like 1200 men employed at Bank Hall but only a small number were directly involved at the actual coal face.  He was there for 16 years and eventually his chance came to earn more at the coal face and he was given the number 99. It was good money he remembers, actually earning more than the footballers at Turf Moor.

‘Bit different now,’ he says and cites the case of Lee Dixon who was an apprentice while Roy was at Turf Moor, and went on to Arsenal, England and TV fame.

‘When you are young you either don’t see or you ignore the dangers and for several years there was no thought or worry of pit closures. Those worries emerged later but whilst he was at the pit he married and bought a little two up and two down in Burnley and got himself an old car.

Eventually the stories of impending pit closures grew and working in a job when some weeks if he was on the nightshift he never saw daylight for days on end when he slept in the daytime, thoughts of finding other work began to grow. After 16 years he left and still at a time when it was possible to find other work quite easily he applied to Burnley Council for employment and was taken on by the Parks and Gardens department.

He laughs now. At the time he was taken on he knew absolutely nothing about gardening, didn’t know a peony from a pansy; didn’t know his ash from his elbow. But what a relief it was to have got away from pit work and he learned as he went along from men more experienced than himself and picked things up easily; so much so that his boss suggested to him that he should sit a few exams and gain a few qualifications and thereby increase his wage as well.

He learned more and more, took to the outdoor life, be it summer or winter when there would be maintenance work, repairs, path laying, clearing, fencing and painting. And all the time Jimmy Adamson was walking his dog round the park every day before he went to the club from his house just opposite Scott Park.

Gardening could be backbreaking too, but in glorious weather under the sun and blue skies there was no comparison with the stooped, dusty, choking and claustrophobic life underground, if a life is what it was. Down the mines he dug coal in the semi-dark. At Scott Park he dug flower beds in the fresh air, looked after the rose and shrub beds, trended the herbaceous borders and the lawns. It was the best swap he ever made. Roy Oldfield did a good job there and this was quietly noticed by the Burnley manager.

Scott Park was one of Burnley’s four flagship parks, the second biggest and had been gifted to the town by businessman Alderman John Hargreaves Scott who willed a sufficient sum of money to develop a park for the benefit of the people. When Burnley Corporation acquired the Hood House Estate it was decided that this would be the place where a park could be created that complied with Scott’s wishes. It opened in 1893 but the official opening was two years later when it was dedicated to the people of Burnley. And how they needed these green spaces as somewhere to find escape from the grimy back-to-back streets in which they lived and the endless, low-paid toil in factories and mines.

In 1972 things weren’t too good at Turf Moor and the team had been relegated to Division Two but as Jimmy Adamson walked his dog, a Scottish Terrier, in the park, Roy and the other gardeners would call out, not always good-naturedly, and chat away with Jimmy about the team and football in general.

‘We’d pull his leg about the results,’ remembered Roy. ‘When results weren’t too good, the banter could sometimes be a bit harsh but then as results improved the tone changed. But one morning Jimmy asked me could I come and see him about a little job.’

Burnley had been relegated at the end of season 1970/71 and Adamson was none too popular. Season 1971/72 was transitional but a run of several consecutive wins at the end of the season gave cause for hope; indeed the next season was one of triumph and celebration when Burnley got back to the top division.

Adamson said nothing about the precise nature of the work he wanted doing so that Roy simply assumed it would be some work in Jimmy’s garden, ‘a little job,’ Jimmy had said.  At 5 that day he downed his tools, cleaned up and set off for Jimmy’s house.

‘But what he said astonished me,’ said Roy. ‘How’d you like to work at Turf Moor as groundsman,’ he asked me.’ It was totally out of the blue, the last thing I expected to be asked.’

‘But I know nowt about being a groundsman,’ he answered almost lost for words and completely taken aback, whereupon Adamson assured him he’d learn all there was to know from the guy about to retire, John Jameson.

The next step was to meet Bob Lord for his approval and to sort out a wage.

‘Jimmy collected me in his big Ford Granada to go and meet Lord. Jimmy did his best to put me at ease but of course I was on edge at the prospect of meeting Lord and still in two minds about talking the job; Lord had a big reputation and at his meat factory had no hesitation sacking anyone who wasn’t up to scratch.  He was up in the boardroom sat behind a huge polished desk, probably worth a fortune today on Antique Roadshow, smartly dressed and I noticed the hearing aid in his ear, the one that he would take out if he didn’t want to listen to someone. The one question he asked me that I still remember to this day was:

‘Av you even bin in any trouble? And I hadn’t.’

‘I made it absolutely clear I had a lot of experience of working on the land, as I put it, but none whatsoever of being a football groundsman.’

Roy remembers thinking he was being crafty when he took his wage slips that included overtime spreading them on the desk and showing them to Bob Lord so that it looked like he was on a good wage that he wanted Lord to at least match. If he worked on Saturday he got time and a half; if he worked on Sundays he got double time.

‘I’d put the wage slips on the big table and it was only at the end of the interview that he gave them what looked like just a careless and cursory glance which left me thinking ey oop, he won’t have noticed that they include the overtime.’

He remembers Bob Lord’s words as he finally sat back in his resplendent pomp. ‘Right then we’ll give thee a do,’ he said, ‘ay then we’ll give thee a do.’

But old Bob was as shrewd as they come and had of course spotted that the wage slips included overtime and were more than just a basic wage. Lord called out to him as he left: ‘And by the way, I saw them wage slips included overtime.’

‘But we’ll see thee right,’ he added and matched the wage.

‘He missed nothing,’ Roy said, ‘and in all the time I knew him he never missed anything, always had his facts right.  In all the years I knew him he was good to me. If you worked hard, you had nothing to worry about and I worked hard. If you slacked then he was on to you.’

It was agreed he would start work as assistant groundsman learning the job from John Jameson and Roy repeated with huge amusement Bob Lord’s words that he’d called out to him ‘And by the way them wage slips as got overtime on ‘em – but we’ll see thee right,’ Roy repeated. He thought it was funny then, and still does.

And Bob Lord did see him right and Roy Oldfield has nothing but good memories of him – except for the mug of tea he once made him the first time he ever went to do some work at Lord’s house in Read.

‘He had this huge bungalow and two fiercesome Alsatians. The first time I went I was terrified. Most people were that met them but his daughter Barbara had them under control instantly so in I went. Bob showed me round, told me what he wanted doing and then asked, “Does thee want a brew? Ah’ll mek thee a brew.”

‘That’ll be grand I said and watched him make this mug of tea. There were no tea bags, he used tea leaves and spooned them out of a grey packet, Typhoo probably, and spoon after spoon went in. It was the worst mug of tea I have ever tasted, so strong you could have stood a shovel in it never mind a spoon. I managed to drink half of it whereupon Bob asked me, “how was that then, alright for thee?” I could hardly say it was terrible so I mumbled that it was really good and managed to get rid of the other half. After that it was always Barbara who made the tea thank goodness.’

‘The story that Bob sacked me for not watering his tomatoes at his bungalow is a bit fanciful. I think Jimmy Adamson told that story after he and Burnley parted company. It was at Gawthorpe that there was a big greenhouse in which we grew them. Lord spent more and more of his time at the club and Gawthorpe once he retired and loved to have a carnation in his buttonhole if we were growing any. If he could he’d pick one and something else we had down there was a Eucalyptus Tree. He’d pick a leaf and rub it under his nose and smell it and say, “Tha’ll never need medicine if you smell this.”’

‘Maybe it was a lad called Ian Rawson that was in trouble for the tomatoes. I do know that Bob eventually sacked him when he caught him at Turf Moor cutting the grass and the lines weren’t straight and Ian had been larking about mowing zig zag lines. I think Bob had been watching him for a while and if you didn’t work or do the job right, then that was it, you were sacked. Once the new stand was built Bob could stand at the top of the steps near the directors’ seats and many a time when I was working on the pitch I’d see him there just standing, arms folded, watching us work.’

‘I only helped out at Gawthorpe perhaps a day a week and always remember setting mole traps down in the bottom fields with Arthur Bellamy. I don’t think we ever caught one. But we had a lot of laughs that’s for sure. Lovely man was Arthur. He’d been a player at the club and a coach and then somehow found himself on the Gawthorpe groundstaff when John Bond arrived. Bond was just one of the many people I worked with.’

‘What wonderful times I had over the years thanks to Jimmy Adamson and that surprise request he made. There were years of drama and excitement meeting some of the great football people, Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Kevin Keegan among them, and of course a procession of Burnley managers one of them being Harry Potts. I can honestly say they were some of the best years of my life – but some of the worst as well when events like the emotional Orient game and the violent Celtic game took place. There were promotions and relegations with emotions ranging from celebrations to despondency.

‘There were so many varied things but on the very first day at Turf Moor to start the new job with little more than a mower and a spade and fork, I looked at the chaos and rubble of the old Brunshaw Road Stand being demolished and thought: ‘what the heck am I doing here?’

Bob Lord in fact had nightmares about the old stand when a report condemned it and found various structural weaknesses. Work began in front of the stand at the end of the 1968/69 season and demolition work began round about the middle of October 1969 well before Roy began work there. It dragged on and on, one reason certainly being the relegation of season ‘70/71 and work on the new stand didn’t begin until May 1973 coinciding with promotion back to the First Division.

‘So I was confronted with this unbuilt stand and still plenty of rubble clearing to do with Jimmy Adamson frequently driving the little dumper truck up and down filled with old bricks and debris. Jimmy was no fool and uncovered a bit of a scam that was taking place when the pitch was relayed and the top soil was supposed to be taken to Gawthorpe to use as filler and for levelling. Trouble is, a lot of it was never getting there. So: Jimmy one day followed one of the lorries and ended up in Rawtenstall where the drivers were selling off the topsoil. Jimmy made sure they were sacked.

‘There was an ancient Atco petrol mower with a 3-feet cut. You started it pulling sharply on the drawstring and prayed it would behave. It was just that one mower for cutting the grass on the huge football pitch. There was a wheelbarrow as well. Contrast that with all the specialist gear they have today for these Desso pitches. In the early days we used lime for marking the lines but that had to stop when a player got lime in a cut on his leg and turned really serious. That was when players like Paul Fletcher weren’t actually hiding the line marker when we needed it even on a matchday once when I decided to freshen up the lines. He hid it and sat laughing as we had to get to Gawthorpe to bring up another one. Fletcher and Colin Waldron were like Morecambe and Wise they were that daft. There was a trainer called Jimmy Holland they made fun of mercilessly including one day locking him out of the dressing room in just his underwear. ‘

‘At Gawthorpe there was an ailing and temperamental Ferguson tractor. On one occasion I thought right, I’ll take it down to Turf Moor for a job that needed doing. The only problem was that this thing was on its last legs and it was a few miles from Gawthorpe to Turf Moor on the main roads. It was barely roadworthy and neither was it taxed.  I was on pins driving it along and said a prayer when I reached Turf Moor and another prayer when I got it back to Gawthorpe again.’

‘If I needed anything I either went to Jimmy Adamson or Albert Maddox.  Albert was a lovely man, short, round and with a smiley face. He worked in an office that was deep underneath the Cricket Field Stand. There were no windows and off one wall was a huge walk-in safe that must have been 8 feet tall and big enough to have converted into a decent sized kitchen. Whenever I went to see him he was always puffing on a cigarette. You could go in his little room sometimes and there’d be one cigarette behind his ear, one burning in the ash tray and one in his mouth. It would not be unkind to say that he was in absolute awe of Bob Lord, a mixture of fear and pure admiration. A lot of people were fearful of Bob Lord. Albert was one of those people who had things in his head, rather than in any organised filed kind of way. You’d go in there and his desk would be heaped with papers, envelopes, bills, letters and documents of all description. If he needed something he’d root through them all and find what he wanted usually buried at the bottom of one of the piles. As he looked, sorted and sifted all of it would be scattered from one side of the desk to the other as he created new piles out of the old ones. He worked like some kind of a mole in this windowless room as it slowly filled up with cigarette smoke.’

‘One day he received a letter from a chap in Morecambe, a supporter that because of his age never got to any more games. Somehow he had got wind of the pitch being relayed and the old turf being stripped off. Could he have the old penalty spot, he wrote, where Jimmy McIlroy used to take all his wonderful penalties, where the ball went one way and the goalie went the other time and time again? And, he asked, could he have the white spot as well.

‘By this time of course all of the turf had gone and was heaped up somewhere in a mountainous pile. Never mind, I thought, I can sort something so I cut another square of turf and painted a penalty spot on it and then Albert and I parcelled it up in a strong white box and sent it off to the chap from Morecambe.

‘A few weeks later we received the most wonderful letter from him thanking us for this precious bit of turf that meant so much to him and he could still see Jimmy Mac hitting perfect penalties from this little square of turf. It was a truly heart-warming letter and when I showed it to Jimmy Adamson I’m sure he actually had a little tear in his eye.

‘What I remember so much is how it was a family club. Over the years it’s a description that’s been used many times. Whether the same feeling is there now I don’t know but back then when I was there we were all as one; there was no gap between us and players. They didn’t shut themselves off, they were approachable and many a time came over for a brew in my little room. Can you imagine today a player hiding the groundsman’s white line marker? But that’s the sort of thing they got up to.