Game schedule frameworks rule OK

Brunton Park

QPR 0 BURNLEY 0

The sight of Carlisle United’s ground slowly disappearing into the flood waters after Storm Desmond, made me wonder which poor folks had the job of cleaning up afterwards. In the old days it would have been the apprentices but they don’t seem to be apprentices anymore; they are scholars and instead of cleaning out the latrines like they used to do after training, they now do college courses. Willie Irvine remembered in his day cleaning out the latrines and recalled that some of the lads were physically ill both during the job and afterwards.

It was probably going to see ex-groundsman Roy Oldfield again that set me off on this train of thought because he’d been telling me how the apprentices back in his day would report to him at 2 in the afternoon and be given their jobs. From Gawthorpe they’d come back to Turf Moor for their lunch, but this would be sandwiches they brought themselves, or a trip to the chippie, or a mad dash to get to a coffee bar in town and back again.

There were basically three sorts of jobs; sweeping the terraces, cleaning out the toilets, or working on the pitch. Some of the cocky ones would tell him it wasn’t their job to be doing these things; they were there to play football. ‘Well go and see the manager then,’ Roy would reply.

By and large they were happy enough sweeping the terraces because of the dropped coins they could find. None of them minded working on the pitch although they were rarely allowed to use the machinery in case of injury. The one time Roy did allow one of the more sensible lads to use the Flymo, the lad managed to slice his footwear. Luckily his feet were undamaged. It was the last time Roy ever let anyone use a machine.

Some of them liked nothing more than playing pranks; balancing buckets of water on a half open door was a regular event. On the day that manager Jimmy Adamson was spotted about to enter a booby trapped door, he was diverted away just in time. Painting was a regular chore and on the occasion that a couple of lads were given tins of black paint to go over anything that was black in the offices one day, they did just that and painted the phone, the door knobs and the seat covers, and then sat back and watched .

A favourite trick was to half complete a job and then hide from Roy. It was Phil Cavener and Kevin Young one day who abandoned sweeping the terraces and climbed up the nearest floodlight pylon to hide and watch Roy looking for them. Roy found their brush and shovel and a half filled sack of rubbish abandoned by one of the barriers. He laughs about to this day and says he never thought of looking upwards.

The FA Youth Cup defeat at home to the London Met Police Academy youth team resulted in more than a few open mouths and raised eyebrows. Allegedly the Met boys train for an hour or two a week. Paul Weller was adamant that what is needed is ‘a new leader, a scouting system and some money throwing at it.’ Andy Farrell said that the Clarets must learn lessons from the defeat but did he mean the young lads or the club itself? Someone who visits Gawthorpe regularly and watches the youths wrote that it has gone downhill since Martin Dobson and Vince Overson left. Another wrote that so many recruitment systems had been dismantled with no logic behind them. The leadership of this part of the club must surely come under scrutiny and questions asked about its effectiveness.

BY all accounts the Met goalkeeper had a superb game but this was a top Championship side with currently plenty of money, versus a Police Academy side. Those who know a thing or two about the youth set-up were certainly suggesting it’s time to smell the coffee. That this should happen whilst I was actually writing about the apprentices of yesteryear sweeping terraces and cleaning out toilets was in itself ironic.

In a programme piece some time ago there was an article on the youth page that talked of: game schedule frameworks… adapted/conditional games… overloads and underloads… enhanced coping strategies… in and out of possession elements and constraint based environments. Then there were coach mentors… elite coach apprenticeship schemes and professional skills mentors. You wondered what Cloughie and Shanks would have made of all this? It’s just jargon I thought as I read it, the sort of piffle that I had to put up with when I was a Head, spouted to us by airy-fairy advisers who made such a mess of things in Leeds 25 years ago they were as good as drummed out of the city when a commissioned report exposed the emptiness of their gobbledygook. It was guff and I couldn’t help thinking that things like ‘in and out of possession elements’ is much the same.

The youths currently sit second bottom of the Youth Alliance League against such illustrious sides as Walsall, Fleetwood, Accrington, Rochdale, Shrewsbury and Morecambe. They have lost 8 out of 12 games. Focus after the PNE defeat was on the first team. Perhaps some serious questions should now be asked about the youth set-up, concerned supporters were suggesting, especially with £4.5million about to be ploughed into Gawthorpe. One simple question: under the current system and re-organised set-up, how many youths have made it into the first team or come anywhere near it?

It was the weekend of the QPR game and the annual trip to London with the Supporters Club and the ground with the worst away facilities and seats that I know of. Mind you I never went anywhere during the Fourth Division years. Something that I ate there years ago was called a pie. I have long since wondered what it actually was. From where the coach drops you, you then have to walk round three sides of the ground to get to the away turnstiles. By the time you get to your seat you’re too tired to be a troublemaker. Last time we were there the front two rows of the upper deck were out of bounds because the safety rail was so low that fans had actually fallen over the edge.

Base camp was the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Heathrow. Half an hour into the Westfield Shopping centre for the pre-match morning and then amble up to the ground. There were no team changes. The first half was tedious save for a lone Parakeet that flew over the ground. The second highlight of the first half was the announcement that there would be just one minute of added time. Between the Parakeet and that there was little of note but we whiled away the time reading the texts that came from our Burnley chums who had decided to test the lunchtime menu at the Hare and Hounds in Todmorden.

Pictures arrived of the burger and fries, they looked exemplary. Pictures arrived of the pie and chips, they looked exemplary. And then the fun started. Apparently there had been rain of biblical proportions that had lasted all morning and at the Hare and Hounds the water began to rise. Texts came fast furious – the water was rising, the fire engines had arrived, the pumps were out, their feet were wet, the car park was submerged, Cliviger was flooded so they couldn’t get home, detours via Cornholme and the steep Shaw road. Before we knew it the first half was over and it was hard to remember any attacking move that involved the word pace, thrust or panache. Burnley had been what they always are, industrious, mechanical, resolute and dogged.

‘Let’s just stop the other buggers scoring and fire balls for Gray to chase,’ seemed to be the basic ploy.

What a contrast the second half was. Arfield and Boyd, so ineffective in the first half upped their game, although runs to the by-line and crosses with pace into the box were still few and far between. Barton prompted, Mee got forward, Gray hustled and bustled, Keane mopped up the sporadic QPR forays, and Heaton was never seriously troubled.

But therein lay the other feature of the half – neither was Green in the QPR goal. Just two Burnley shots on target told its own story. Green was largely a spectator. Burnley came on strong in the half but created little where it mattered. Vokes had a couple of half decent headed chances and knew he should have done better.

We waited for the cavalry to arrive in the shape of a couple of subs. Lowton for Darikwa maybe, Kightly for a leggy Boyd, or Marney for Jones; but things stayed the same. Dyche explained later that they were all playing so well, it would have been tough on them to take anyone off even though there were players on the bench itching to get on. The longer the half went on the more Burnley were on top and QPR were continually on the back foot. It was a time to throw on the reinforcements. But as we all know, this is not the Dyche style. Vokes was clearly tiring; Hennings would have provided fresh legs.

But football never lets you down; it was Burnley in the dying minutes that could so easily have lost when two last-minute QPR corners caused havoc in the Burnley box and it was the Burnley fans chewing fingernails.

We trooped out and the concourse the away supporters must exit must surely be one of the narrowest and worst in the league. Good away point said some. That’s cost me the best part of £100 said others and I’ve had enough. The little band of Supporters Club folks shuffled back to the coach to head back to the Crowne Plaza and pay London prices that made your hair curl for drinks at the bar.

Complementary bottles of wine on the tables on the Friday night had impressed us. We could have done with them on the Saturday night after the game. Good point it might have been but there’s always the feeling after a 0-0 draw that you could have spent the afternoon doing something much more worthwhile with your time. Some 0-0 draws can still be filled with excitement, incident, goal-mouth drama, tension and thrills, thunderbolt shots and fingertip saves. QPR versus Burnley was sadly not one of them.

In our little private function room at the hotel we dined splendidly with the room buzzing with chat and bonhomie on the Friday night. After the game on Saturday it was quiet, restrained, almost subdued. It was as if the life had been drained out of us by another game without goals.

Because it was Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s debut game as manager it was a featured game in the Sunday Times. Their reporter had it pretty much spot on. It was battling Burnley the party poopers; they looked a well-drilled and organised side, he wrote. This is a Burnley side that is fifth, and looks a decent bet for the play-offs in May. But:

‘It’s difficult to know quite what to make of Burnley’s form,’ he continued. ‘They have not won in their last five games, but on the flip side they have lost just once in 11 games and as you would expect from a Sean Dyche side they were a tough nut to crack. Perhaps Dyche had decided to take them back to basics after the surprise 2-0 defeat to Preston North End, just their third loss of the season. For the most part a clean sheet appeared to be their number one priority.’

On paper many of the stats are admirable and you could argue the result against Preston was a freak with the goals donated to them at one end and chances spurned at the other. But this is a Burnley side that over the season has created so few chances and when they do come along not too many are taken with the draw at Cardiff the result of a comedy own goal. Watching Burnley all too often this season has seemed like hard work.

It’s certainly true that this was a good, battling point at a resurgent QPR; but suggestions that the best is yet to come, that there is another gear they can get into, at the moment seem to be optimistic rather than realistic.

We departed the bustling hotel Sunday morning weaving our way through the packed lobby, heaving with ‘plane crews, freshly coiffured stewardesses, people jetting off to here there and everywhere, and people looking red-eyed and shattered who had just landed and were seeking sanctuary for the night. A family we bumped into in the lift were heading off to Colombia for Christmas. The place positively teemed with tourists from Japan. We gave each other Brownie points for identifying different airline uniforms.

The Crowne Plaza: highly recommended with breakfast spreads that were truly mouth-watering. At Aylesbury we ticked yet another M&S off our list. At Stratford it was the first Christmas Dinner of the season to be merry at the regular eating-stop, The Pen and Parchment. It might have been only a 0-0 draw but when the food is good you don’t feel too bad.

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