BRENTFORD 1 BURNLEY 3
It was the morning after the night before and we were still all reeling a little at the 5-0 scoreline at MK Concrete especially those who had been there. Grandson Joe had slept over so I put a note in big thick black felt tip WON FIVE NIL opposite his bed propped up on the lamp where he would see it when he woke in the morning. These things don’t happen too often so we have to make the most of them.
Now we were allegedly competing with interest from Spurs and Liverpool for Walsall defender Rico Henry but there had been no signings yet, the powder was still dry, the club with plenty of feelers out, things pending, but no jigsaw pieces would as yet fit. If Alan Judge was a target as reported yet again, the Brentford valuation of £8million presumably scotched that move pretty quickly although the Brentford manager confirmed that a bid had been made.
Being a Tod lad, the story of little Billy Nesbitt has always fascinated me. Born in Cornholme, near enough to Tod to qualify as a Tod lad, he played in the 1914 Cup Final even though he was deaf. The newest story I heard, which I am assured is true, from someone who talked to Billy’s nephew several times, concerned his father who had come down to the Tod valley originally to find work. Sitting in the pub one night he was asked would he be going to the Cup Final to see Billy play?
‘Alas no, he answered, ‘I’m out of work and just can’t afford to go even though our Billy got me a ticket.’
Sitting nearby someone overheard this and came over to his table. ‘You’ve got no ticket? The bloke asked him. ‘And you’re Billy’s father?’
He nodded.
‘Well,’ said the stranger, ‘I’ll get you there. I’m a guard on the railways. You come to me at Tod station and I’ll sort you out. You can ride with me in the guard’s van and when we change at Manchester I’ll give you a note to take to the guard on any London bound train and it will get you in his guard’s van as well.’
Billy’s father was astonished and was just so grateful. With the added information as to what time to meet him at Tod station very early on the day of the game, he went home that night to tell Billy that he would indeed be at the Cup Final to see him play. From the station in London he would walk to Crystal Palace if necessary and get there in time.
There was no prouder man when he saw the game and saw his son Billy on the winning team and he is even said to be one of the people sitting on top of the poles in an iconic picture of the spectators that shows just how ingenious people can be. At the back of the ground were several vertical poles and somehow, spectators, one to a pole, shinned up them and sat on top.
But he had one problem however; and that was just how to get home. This time he had no letter to get him into a welcoming guard’s van. Resourceful to the end he got himself into the station and perched on one of the buffers in between two of the carriages and clung on for dear life all the way to Manchester. Changing trains he repeated the trick and got back home to Todmorden.
On the day of the Brentford game it was revealed that Burnley were ‘considering’ a bid for Cardiff City’s Matthew Connolly. How does anyone know that Burnley are just ‘considering’ a bid? And exactly what does ‘considering’ mean? How does anyone actually get wind of this? Who spills the beans? Or is it just more fiction?
I’d seen Roy Oldfield again and he told me about the first time he ever met Harry Potts. It was when Roy was at Rose Grove School and Margaret Potts (then Nurse Margaret Hollinrake) was doing a hair inspection, she was the nit nurse. Schools still received visits from the nit nurse well into the 80s but then they were phased out for reasons I never fully understood. Anyway: there was Margaret searching for nits rummaging through their hair and the boys saw Harry Potts waiting for her nearby. He’d actually come into the school with her.
Such was their excitement when they saw him sitting there that many of the boys including Roy went round to the back of the queue so that Margaret could see them again and they could gawp at Harry properly and even say hello. After that, Roy said, they never called her Nitty Nora the bug explorer ever again.
A crisp, frosty, white day to wake up to with blue skies and sharp air; the hills around Burnley coated with a dusting of snow. This was a Friday night game especially for SKY. Friday games have been around for a while but they still take some getting used to. But if Burnley could play like this every Friday then I’d be the first to suggest this is when we should play every game, the performance was so outstanding.
‘The perfect first half for Burnley,’ they reported on SKY, and so it was as they walked off the field with a 3-0 lead after a display that was simply scintillating. This was football that was simply sizzling, sensational as it tore Brentford apart. The only grumble was that so many chances went begging that this could have so easily have been a 6-0 scoreline after just 45 minutes.
All of the goals were from distance, the first two just perfect strikes from distance, albeit Barton’s from a free kick. But the skill involved in both of them was just sublime, Arfield curling one in from 25 yards when the ball was gently laid back to him. Barton’s too was from 25 yards as he gently ambled up to the stationary ball and caressed it into the top left corner with hardly any effort. The third from Boyd was also from distance but this one was just inside the penalty area as it bounced once and went into the bottom right corner.
This was dreamland but not for Vokes or Gray who spurned other clear chances that Dyche said were probably easier to score than the three that went in. The verdict was unanimous on every website that this was just about the best 45 minutes that anyone had seen from a Burnley team such was their dominance and control, their passing and movement.
And what a dramatic start to the evening when it became clear that Burnley target Tarkowski had refused to play, citing the reason that he didn’t feel in the right frame of mind. The pundits to a man condemned his behaviour and the poor advice he presumably received. It most certainly raised the issue of would we really want to sign someone who behaved like this. The other target, Judge, certainly did play and proceeded to demonstrate that he would be a superb signing. Despite being on the losing side you could argue he was the best player on the field, never gave up and caused Burnley no end of problems in the second half.
There was no way that Brentford could be so poor in the second half. Their manager, Smith, made changes, they came out fired up and from minute one of the half provided a totally different scenario for now it was they who controlled the game, passed the ball around, made Burnley chase shadows and defend the penalty area heroically. If in the first half Burnley played like Barcelona such was the brilliance of the attacking moves; in the second half it was back to defending with a back four that was like an iron wall save for one lapse when Judge (it had to be) cut in and scored under Heaton’s outstretched arm.
The bulk of the half remained and now it was backs to the wall stuff with just an occasional foray into the Brentford box. Mee and Keane were outstanding; defenders took over from forwards as the stars of the show and Brentford attacks floundered faced with this rock-solid opposition so that the longer the half went on it seemed less and likely that Brentford would score again despite their possession.
What will remain in our memories though is that wonderful first half. Praise was universal but boos rained down on Dyche from the Brentford crowd intent on blaming him for the Tarkowski situation even though it was Brentford that revealed that bids had been made. Nothing was leaked by Burnley that’s for sure although if maybe Gray had sent messages to Tarkowski or even Judge, isn’t that what footballers do? Judge played, Tarkowski didn’t and that tells you more about Tarkowski than it does about Burnley’s transfer dealings.
Uwe Rosler one of the pundits described it as the perfect 45 minutes in the first half and had never seen anything as good in the Championship. Every Burnley player had a memorable game yet it was Alan Judge who was arguably man of the match, demonstrating his worth the right way and probably sticking another million to his valuation. On this performance he would be a huge addition to the Burnley squad, a squad that is already impressive when you look at the bench.
It was one of those rare Saturdays when you can crank up the heating, relax and watch the Test Match in South Africa with a thumping win for England, have a couple of glasses of Sloe Gin, catch up on old episodes of Frasier, get the newspapers and sit back and enjoy the rest of the day’s football scores, all the while knowing that the night before your team won and bagged the points so it was now other supporters squirming and hoping to keep in touch or stay in the top six.
Down in Brentford they were still seething about Tarkowski’s diva style conduct. ‘Never have I known such anger, frustration and incredulity among the Griffin Park faithful,’ wrote one guy. Their post-match exit music was well chosen, Jessie J and her chart topping ‘Price tag’, single was a telling choice. The lyrics couldn’t have been a coincidence:
‘It’s not about the money, money, money. We don’t need your money, money, money.’
There was unanimous acceptance that Burnley had thoroughly deserved the win but still the misguided notion that it had been Burnley publicising the pursuit of their players. Meanwhile it was hoped that the Brentford chairman would hang on to Tarkowski and just stick him in the reserves and keep him to do laps with the kids. Never mind the money, there is a principle at stake, was the general gist, tell Burnley what they can go and do, which in truth was unkind to a club that had kept well quiet as they always do. His conduct for sure raised the question asked by several folks on the websites – is this the kind of player we really want at Turf Moor, as they recalled how Andy Gray some years ago in the days of Coyle had done just such a thing to engineer a move to Charlton.
The one bit that Brentford supporters did get wrong was in suggesting that Burnley were welcome to drive down with lorry loads of cash and take him off their hands. Clearly they weren’t aware that ‘lorry loads’ isn’t quite in the Burnley lexicon. This is the land of Poundstretcher and special offers, we faint at the idea of paying big money. Every manager and board members’ first words at birth are ‘won’t be held to ransom.’
‘As a performance, it’s up there with the best,’ said Dyche and who would argue with that.
‘Has there ever been a better six days?’ was a messageboard question. You’d have to go a long way back to say yes, to the days when at Easter clubs played three games in four days, and if memory serves Burnley did once win three in four days, but I suppose only us old codgers will go back to as far as that.
But these three recent wins are most certainly special, all away games, 1,000 miles covered, the Cup win totally unexpected, 10 goals and just 2 conceded. Plus: Arsenal might just be sitting up and taking notice that in the next round of the Cup, the Burnley boys are not to be taken lightly. Already their fan-sites and messageboards were suggesting that the Cup game might not be quite the walk-over they were anticipating.
To add to the general glee two of the teams above Burnley both lost, Derby and Middlesbrough. The Tour de Britain over then: for those who had travelled to all of the three games each one just got better and better. Just under 1,000 at MK Dons and well over 1,000 at Griffin Park; this was an epic week and it will have cost them a small fortune, but I doubt any one of them regrets one minute of the travelling or one penny of the costs.