1994 And A Wembley Play-Off Date

          But it was simple really; we’d go to work and forget about two difficult kids, and then come home and forget about our difficult jobs. One balanced out the other. That plus a sense of humour and a huge amount of stoicism kept us going. These were far from easy times but we soldiered on. It seemed there was no respite except for weekend trips to the caravan we had over at Pilling until we eventually sold it. The last parent to go was my own mother who died in 1991. By then we had discovered Paxos in Greece and the holiday there became an annual pilgrimage that only ended when we transferred our affection to the island of Lefkatha not too far away to the south.

     Pilling: the name conjures up images of racing away from school and Leeds at 3.30 on Fridays, loading up the car with food and kids, and arriving at the caravan around 6. Pilling was over in Lancashire near Knott End on the Fylde coast. We used to call it Knott End on Sludge. It was like the end of the world but it became a kind of sanctuary. Across the estuary was Fleetwood, a faded fishing town that had once bristled and bustled with scores of fishing boats landing their dwindling catches. The word ‘quota’ arrived and the industry was dying. From Fleetwood you could head into Blackpool, the capital of sleaze and tat and we spent many an afternoon there riding the trams.     

     I guess that big, ugly, static caravan on a site that had hundreds of other vans, saved our sanity. We bought it immediately after mother in law died. In the early days when we raced over, my mother would have steak and chips ready for us. We’d head for Lancaster, or the Lakes or we’d just laze around the site if it was warm and sunny. Then we’d leave and head back for Leeds late Sunday afternoon with batteries refreshed. By the following Friday we were exhausted and worn out again. I think we were on auto pilot most of the week after Tuesday.

     It was no wonder we never got to a Burnley game for such a long period and then in the late 90s just the occasional game. But one game we did get to was the Wembley Play-off Final of ’94. What made that possible was leaving the two kids with relatives in Midhurst, Sussex, and then driving up to Wembley from there. The sense that everywhere you went and travelled there were Burnley supporters was emphasised that day as we headed north towards London since every other car seemed to be decorated with claret and blue scarves and colours, even though we were miles from Burnley. In my old diaries I found this that I’d written the day after. We’d driven up from Sussex and left the kids with Mrs T’s sister:

     Wembley yesterday was just a sea of claret and blue flags, banners, rosettes and scarves. One half of the ground crammed with joyous, celebrating fans and the other end sprinkled with dejected Stockport fans, most of them having left as soon as they could.

     Burnley won, in a pulsating game, filled with incident, drama and tension. Images, scenes and imprints will remain stamped in my head for years to come. It was an afternoon of emotion and drained energy.

     We left Midhurst 30 miles or so south of London at 11.30 and were in Brentford an hour later. Getting lost, and being taken on a sort of diverted roundabout route added another frustrated hour. Miraculously we parked easily in a station car park, very close by, ate our sandwiches and then joined the throngs of claret and blue shirted fans on a sunny and dry day.

     On the drive up we’d exchanged waves with another family with their car bedecked with Burnley colours and then once on the M25 and then in on the M4, the numbers of Burnley travelling fans increased until a mile or so from the ground, it was just a tangled mass of car after car filled with Burnley supporters. Closer still and fans walking to the ground clogged the streets, the pubs overflowing and the air filled with incessant shouts, chants, and songs. We joined those masses and were simply carried along by the excitement of ever-increasing masses of people converging on Wembley Way. Stockport fans seemed few and far between. Wembley was Burnley for the day. 

     We bought T-shirts and flags, extra programmes, the ground impressive, the pitch green, the Burnley end a cauldron. With 32,000 Burnley fans in there and what looked like a handful from Stockport you couldn’t help thinking how unjust it would be if Burnley lost. In fact it was unthinkable.

     So we sat horrified when Stockport scored within a couple of minutes. We were open-mouthed and stunned. This wasn’t in our script at all. But for reasons that only they will know, Stockport then proceeded to behave like thugs. They spat, they stamped, they had two players sent off and the game was Burnley’s. If chances had been taken it would have been far more emphatic than the 2-1 scoreline suggests. Sure nerves were frayed in the last few minutes when Stockport’s nine men swarmed round the Burnley goal. But justice was done. The bad guys lost. Their behaviour was inexplicable as they systematically roughed Burnley up. They had seven players booked. They played the man not the game. Their manager, Danny Bergara, as perplexed as the rest of us; ‘Professional suicide,’ one paper reported.

     We stayed ten minutes or so afterwards, soaking up the cheers, the roars and the adulation as the players acknowledged the Burnley crowd. This was a club on the verge of ignominy just 6 years earlier. This was the second promotion in just three seasons. They’d played the best football of the season. And they’d played it at Wembley the home of football when it mattered most.

     Ironically when the season ended Burnley were 12 points behind Plymouth who they beat in the play-offs and 12 points behind Stockport. Disgruntled fans from the two clubs grumbled what right had Burnley to be promoted. But this is football. Logic is sometimes absent.

     It was an anti-climax driving home. Moments like this you want to last forever. The euphoria dissipated along the motorways although every car we saw seemed to have claret flags flying from the windows. Fans disappeared to all parts of the country. The next day, we returned to Leeds.

          I’d been Head of Thorpe School since April ‘84. Ten years later and I was fed-up enough, but there’d still be two more years to go before the decision had to be made that one of us would need to stop work and be at home to see to our ‘special needs’ daughter when she left her school. Leisure and relaxation, other than holidays in Paxos, were fleeting. Burnley FC existed in cuttings I stuck into the diaries I kept, so football wasn’t entirely forgotten. 

     1994 was the 50^th Anniversary of the D-Day landings and the beginning of the end of World War Two. The great Matt Busby died. Jackie Kennedy died, one of the great charismatic and iconic figures of the age, although by then she was Jackie Onassis. Her death triggered memories of the assassination of President Kennedy.

    Bosnia continued to be savaged by the Serbs. The genocide was even worse in Rwanda. Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. The age of the professional politician dressed up in spin and designer suits had arrived. Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. Only 14 days earlier there had been elections when every black person had the vote for the first time ever. Britain as good as ceased to be an island when the Channel Tunnel was inaugurated by the Queen and president Mitterand of France. The world was fascinated by the saga of O J Simpson in the USA. He had been one the greatest American footballers only to become embroiled in a gripping murder trial. The Estonia ferry disaster resulted in the deaths of over 900 passengers in the Baltic. In the UK the National Lottery got under way, the first draw in November when most of us hoped to be the first of the millionaire winners. At last, terrorist Carlos the Jackal was arrested.

     At the cinema amongst the big films were Lion King, Dumb and Dumber, Forrest Gump, The Flintstones, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Star Trek, Disclosure and Pulp Fiction. The big stars were Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Hugh Grant, Jim Carrey, Jodie Foster, Cameron Diaz and Sharon Stone. Best Film at the Oscars was Forrest Gump. Best actor was Tom Hanks and best actress Jessica Lange.

     On TV we watched Eastenders if we wanted to be miserable, Emmerdale if we wanted a bit of country air, and Coronation for a bit of jollity. Brookside was in the news for featuring the first Lesbian kiss on TV. There was the first ever National Lottery draw with Noel Edmonds and first showings of Vicar of Dibley, The Fast Show and Ready Steady Cook. We carried on watching Heartbeat, Men Behaving Badly and Mr Bean.  It was goodbye to Jim’ll Fix It, Paul Daniels Magic Show (he disappeared) and Lovejoy. It was only years later that Saville’s terrible crimes were uncovered publicly. With hindsight it is clear there were cover-ups. Mrs T’s mother did voluntary work at St James Hospital, Leeds, and always said he was a deeply unpleasant man and always felt uncomfortable in his company. It was 20 years ago but I still remember the word she used for him: ‘creepy.‘ There were strong suspicions back then about him but nothing ever happened to expose him.

     The music stars were Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Nirvana, Pet Shop Boys, Sting, Madonna, Elton John, Oasis, Phil Collins, Take That and Prince. Cliff Richard was still there and the Rolling Stones rolled on and on. Kurt Cobain blasted himself to death with a shotgun. Top of the top 100 in the UK were Wet Wet Wet. None of this meant anything to me still listening to piano jazz and Chris Rea. 

     George Foreman at 45 became the oldest ever world boxing champion. The US Open Golf Championship was won by Ernie Els. Nick Price won the British Open. Miinnehoma won the Grand National. Michael Schumacher won the racing drivers’ championship. Stephen Hendry won the world snooker championship. Wimbledon champion was Pete Sampras. Brazil won the World Cup. Manchester United did the double winning the league title and the FA Cup. AC Milan were European champions.

     I can’t ever remember a time when there wasn’t a dog in the family – except for today. When the last one went to the vets for the final journey, 2009 I think it was maybe, we vowed then that he was the last. He was the Scottie that featured in the first football book I wrote; ‘It’s Burnley Not Barcelona.’ People do talk to their dogs and I was no exception and the pages of that book often describe the walks we’d do along the canal and the vile rolling he used to do in fox and goose droppings.

     The Scottie replaced the handsome Retriever we had for 14 years. A nobler dog you could not wish to meet, gentle, calm, amiable and easy-going. He was a cast-off puppy when we bought him, with terrible scars down his back from injections that had gone wrong. So, he’d never be a show dog but we weren’t bothered about that. He was living with the vet and if no home could be found he was due to be put down. We took one look and thought he’d do for us. Over the months the scars slowly vanished, the hair grew again and this damaged specimen of doghood, once swathed in bandages, grew to be the best companion anyone could have. His time with us coincided with the 14 years I was the head at Thorpe and he was one of the reasons I stayed sane. Every night I took that dog for a walk round the local park in rain, hail, snow, sleet, fog and if we were lucky there were some sunny summer days as well. The 40 minutes it took, was the greatest unwind imaginable.  If I set off with a headache and was fed up, by the time I got back my head was cleared. I used to think there would be no need for stress counselling if everyone had a dog. If the rain was pouring down the back of your neck during a downpour it soon took your mind off national curriculum and attainment targets. When I took a minibus of kids to another park I’d take the dog along as well. Today you’d have to clear about 100 Health and Safety obstacles to do that. Back then I just bundled him in the van without a second thought. Those kids loved him, some of them as tough as old boots, old before they should have been because of home circumstances; but that dog was the best pal they could have had and they vied to hold him on the lead or make a fuss of him.

    So, for 14 years that dog was a best pal and the older he got, the wiser he got. He was faithful, loyal and constant. And then he developed a simple sore on his leg. It grew and grew. It was clear it was something horrible. He was limited to limping round the garden. And then even that became so painful and difficult we knew that the time had come to end it. I’ve had some bad days in my life but this was one of the worst.  Somehow I got him into the car and he wagged his tail because the car meant a walk somewhere. But for him it was the last walk and it was only into the vets for one last injection that would end all that suffering. I sat on the floor with him his head in my lap while the vet put the needle into a vein. It was instant. He was gone. I sat there for an age the tears streaming down my face.  I took his collar home with me and still have it. It was on the kitchen table for days where I could see it and now it’s in a drawer. For days I was sure I could still hear him snuffling round the garden, his name tag jingling from his collar. Sometimes I thought I saw him there in the half-light. I missed the sounds that he made – the loud yawns, the tail thumping against the furniture when he was excited or pleased, the noise of the dish being pushed around the floor as he licked the last drop, the bark at the door when he wanted to come in. I missed the sheer pleasure he showed when I came in from school at the end of the day. And his big feet: I missed the sound of them as he thundered up and down the stairs or along the hall. Once or twice I went for a walk round the park on my own but it just wasn’t the same. And I got huge lumps in my throat for a long time afterwards whenever I was reminded of him. We swore we’d never get another dog telling ourselves they were a tie and they cost a fortune to put in kennels when you went on holiday. But there was also the thought that we did not want to be so emotionally wrecked if we had to go through all that again… until… It was sometime in ’98 when it all came to an end but then a few months later the Scottie arrived and boy how different he was.

      If the old Retriever was an ally at home, then one of the best I had at school was the dinner lady who had been there for years. She was there when I arrived and retired shortly before I left. She was ‘old-school’, believed in right and wrong, good and bad and above all else good manners. And nothing would move her from her post, not even a major scare when I thought the gas boiler down the cellar was about to explode. It was a boiler that had been there for decades. Experts came to see and marvel at it. It was the size of a small garage and made the most horrific noises whenever it lit up. But one day the noises that came from it, we could hear through the floorboards and I had this vision of the thing blowing up.  I got everyone out of that building pronto quick; all bar one that is, the goodly Mrs Needham who was just setting out the dinner trolleys filled to the brim with food.

    ‘I will not leave all this food,’ she stated with a face like thunder, and there she stayed until we all went back in after when it was pronounced safe and all that was wrong was something deep inside working loose, so that the whole thing was vibrating like an earthquake.

     She was equally terrifying with the teachers as well. Apparently teaching good manners was not considered part of her job description. Dolloping a splodge of mash into a pool of gravy on a plate was presumably all she was required to do. But in my little Empire I valued Mrs Needham’s insistence on manners. If we didn’t instil it into the kids, what hope was there for the world? She was a pillar of both school and village and for well over 20 years. Be it shepherd’s pie, or swede or cabbage, those kids were obliged to have some of everything and eat it whether they wanted it or not.  She eyeballed those kids as if to dare them to say ‘no thankyou’ and when they finished she was there at the dirty dish trolley to see they had finished. Her fiercesome glare and metal spoon were legendary. I don’t know why we had a leftover bowl? There were never any leftovers.

    I stood for 14 years toasting my bottom on the huge old cast-iron radiator in the hall by the serving trolleys while the kids were given their dinners and I watched her in action. She was brusque and unsmiling. But she cared. She cared that those kids ate a decent meal because she knew that for many it was the only decent meal they’d get that day. And I watched and saw how she cared when she gave ‘selected’ pupils a little extra because she knew these were the really needy ones.

    It was a tough little school full of tough little kids and some parents who’d as soon tell you ‘f*ck off’ as say good morning. Mind you I can think of a couple of staff who’s have been happy to tell me to f*ck off, as well. But I never heard an unkind word said against Mrs Needham. Sometimes I wondered how she’d cope with the ‘modern’ child if she made them eat the crusts of a pizza. But, she was about the only person who could get a ‘please’ and a ‘thankyou’ from Damian, the kid from hell, the one who sat on the shed roof if he’d had enough of lessons, or sat on top of the piano when it was PE, the one who brought a behaviour counsellor to his knees.  In fact Mrs Needham must have had a huge influence on him. On one occasion when I told him to get down from the shed he agreed: ‘But only if you say please and thankyou,’ he said grinning.

     I always owed a debt of gratitude to horoscopes. Without fail I checked every morning the Capricorn predictions. One of them once said a quiet day is in store. I had the flu that day but dragged myself in. Two other staff were away. The gas man was coming to put a new fire in the office. The alarm fitters had been in school three days already. When the LEA discovered that the old system was me ringing a gloriously ancient hand-held brass bell and running round the school with it shouting ‘Don’t panic Captain Mainwaring,’ they were horrified. Late in the morning my pal Harry arrived to inspect the front door. It was rotten. You didn’t need to open it; you just walked through the hole. Next up a book rep arrived that I’d forgotten about and set up a display in the hall for me to look at. The educational psychologist came, a rare event in a primary school because there were so few of them. She was as concerned about me as much as the kids, ever since she’d caught me talking to the mirror. She did a stress test and questionnaire with the staff one day and then analysed the results. She concluded that one member was close to a heart attack with stress every time he walked in. That was Derek, the old deputy who did indeed collapse one day. She collated all the results and identified the biggest single source of all the stress in the school. It was me.

     This time she came in and the first thing she asked was: ‘How are you Dave, still talking to yourself a lot? There are happy pills you can take you know.’ I looked in the mirror to see if I was still there. It was still not lunchtime and in the afternoon a steel drum group were coming.

     The gas man was still fitting the fire. The alarm men were still drilling. They never spoke to each other but seemed to communicate by telepathy. The Little and Large of the alarm world had arrived one day to inspect the place. They’d tut tutted, sucked their teeth, tapped the walls, shook their heads, asked if they could have a pot of tea and then disappeared for the day. When they came back they never used stepladders but just climbed on the nearest desk no matter who was sitting there, be it Sue the secretary typing, or June the dinner lady counting dinner money, or me doing headmasterish things. We sat there as the plaster showered down on us. You always knew where they were by just following the trail of white footprints and trails of cable.

     The book rep packed her books away as the steel band arrived and set up. If I didn’t have a headache when they started I did when they finished. The only plus was they entertained the whole school most of the afternoon.  As they played, Little and Large continued to bang and hammer, the gasman managed to finish, Harry announced that a new door was needed, my head throbbed, the psychologist assured me she was on hand if I needed medication; and then right at the very end of the day an LEA Adviser arrived unexpectedly. To my relief Errol was one of the few that I liked. He didn’t take the job too seriously, enjoyed a laugh and moaned about the people he worked for as much as I did. He came in and complained immediately. He had a car boot full of training videos he was distributing.

     ‘They’re crap,’ he announced. ‘I’m driving round Leeds delivering crap.’ He grizzled about this menial role whilst his eyes darted round the school walls looking for ‘excellence.’ My horoscope that day had forecast a pleasant easy day. As typical school days went, I suppose it was. Most of them were worse.

     If Burnley had won promotion at Wembley earlier in the year, the next season failure beckoned and by the end of it they’d gone straight back down. We watched from afar. I stuck a few cuttings in my diaries. They make sad reading. Players came and went; big money was spent on average players; the number of points lost to last-minute goals was astonishing. Player after player was sent off. Manager Mullen ducked and dived and dabbled with the team and bought players more in hope than expectation, especially strikers. He bought strikers like some of us buy stamps at the Post Office. The very last game of the season summed it all up. Burnley were 1-0 up and then said goodbye to two points as Bolton equalised in the last minute.  We were only 40 miles away in Leeds but I can’t remember it really registering we were so pre-occupied with our own frantic lives. Bolton were promoted, Burnley relegated.

     Their struggles and our own struggles were set to continue for quite a while.