Jimmy Adamson Book Chapter 2 Part 2

     As Jimmy grew up in the 30s and 40s, Ashington thrived with places like Arrowsmith’s Department Store, Hiller’s Bazaar; Brough’s the grocers, Bertha Lewis’s corset shop, Russell Cook’s Department Store, Blacklock’s Emporium where there was waitress service in the café and an open-air dance floor on the roof. Main’s bike shop was actually close to the Adamsons on Laburnum Terrace. The Coop in fact had shops all over the town and employed hundreds of people and the Coop ‘Divi’ was a system whereby a tally was kept of everything spent and then once a year you could claim the ‘dividend.’ Everyone who shopped there had a number and was given a tiny coupon after every purchase. To this day I can still remember my own mother’s coupon number was 6014 and collecting the ‘divi’ was one of the special days of the year when you walked away from the accounts department with cash in your hand. On the day I was entrusted with the job of collecting it, I felt ten feet tall. It was a small annual windfall that meant treats for many families.

     If there were a few pence going spare then ‘pop’ wagons toured the streets selling lemonade, dandelion and burdock, and ginger beer. Bottles were returnable and re-usable so there was a 1p deposit on them. It was quite an industry for lads like Jimmy to collect them and retrieve the deposits, either to buy another bottle of ‘pop’ or an ice-cream from one of the ice-cream tricycles that rode round the town with their containers of ice creams fastened to the front of the bike. Giovanni Rossi had an ice cream and confectionary shop and was one of several Italians who settled in Ashington.

     If ice-cream and ‘pop’ were rare extravagances in an otherwise tough, hard world, then an even greater treat was a holiday. The few who could afford went to the Butlin’s holiday camps at Ayr, Filey or Skegness for a week. But that was rare and it was more likely to be a day out at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea just a few miles away. Cissie Charlton wrote about her family outings there using their horse and cart. Or there was Whitley Bay and until Beeching devastated the railways there were trains to both of them. At Newbiggin there were acres of fine sands, maybe an ice-cream from Bertorelli’s café. There were slot machines in the penny arcade. Down below the wall of the quay were the swings called ‘shuggy’ boats; the boat being a wooden contraption in which you sat in opposite a partner while you pulled the rope that made it swing back and forth, higher and higher.

     At Ashington’s Methodist Central Hall concerts drew world class musicians and singers. There were five cinemas; the Wallow, Regal, Pavilion, Hippodrome and Buffalo, their heyday being the years after World War Two. If Jimmy had visited home in May 1949 he could have seen Bob Hope and Jane Russell at the Regal in The Paleface, or Peter Lorre in Casbah at the Pavilion. Had May been with him he might have danced at The Arcade on 6 May for three shillings to J Dalkin and his Rhythm Boys. The premier location for dancing was, however, the Princess Ballrooms. From the outside it was a drab building but inside it was a fantasy world of lights, fine fittings and a sprung floor. Alas Jimmy never had the chance to take May. It burned down in 1944 and was never replaced.

     In Jimmy’s schooldays a favourite game was ‘Chucks’ where 5 small stones were thrown and caught, first one, then two, then three and so on until the fifth. Schools were places then where desks faced the blackboard at the front of the room and you spoke in class at your peril. Children’s Gala Days were just as important as the Miners’ Day. Each school added its pupils to the parade one by one and they made their way to the park gates led by brass bands and banners. As many as five brass bands were part of the processions and in the park there were all kinds of events; races, exhibitions and a huge picnic. When he was just eight years old, just like hundreds of other children in the town, he would have enjoyed the street party in honour of the Coronation of George V1.  

     Jimmy had been a centre-half at school but then later switched to inside-forward, football terms that are no longer part of football’s vocabulary. His favourite team was Sunderland and his favourite player was Raich Carter, surprising perhaps when the nearest team was Newcastle United. Maybe Sunderland became ‘his’ team when he heard they won the FA Cup in 1937 beating Preston North End 3 - 1. He’d have been eight years old, that magical age when interest in football can first begin and when imagination takes hold and dreams begin. Maybe he’d heard the men on street corners or outside the clubs talking about it or reading of it in their newspapers. Newcastle too had won it during his childhood, but that was in 1932 and he’d have been barely three years old with no concept of the magic of football.

     When he left school for the mines, the war was raging in the world outside Ashington so that League football stopped but local games and leagues continued as best they could. When he emerged from the gloom of the pit he played for Ashington YMCA in the Ashington Welfare League Junior Division and then East Chevington Juniors. In 1945 when he was 15 he played in trials for Northumberland Youth.

     Inside forwards were of two kinds, the schemer and the striker. Adamson belonged to the former group. Half-backs were the players who played in the midfield. In those far-off days teams had one centre-half as opposed to the two centre-backs of today. There were two full backs, three half-backs, and five forwards. Either the left-half or the right-half would be the second schemer who would link with the inside-forward schemer. The remaining half-back would be the more rugged and defensive of the two. The centre-half played in the middle of them and had one rigid job – to stop the opposing centre-forward. For years these positions and roles were firmly defined. It was something that years later Jimmy Adamson would question and change. You wonder just how soon in his football career he began to ask questions about these rigid formations.

     Football and mining were the forces that shaped Ashington. The Ashington Colliery welfare ground had seven football pitches catering for three separate leagues and more than 20 local sides. To maintain them, a penny a week was deducted from the miners’ pay. The working-men’s’ clubs had their own sides. It was no wonder that Ashington was able to supply a stream of footballers to league clubs.

     But if the war played havoc with football, nevertheless the scouts still continued to watch these local games and so it was that Jackie Dryden, an ex-claret, watched Adamson progress and noted his early skills and ability. The rangy Adamson must at this time have been all skin and bone, tall and thin, gawky arms and bony elbows, long-legged, with a slightly less than graceful, lanky running style, covering the ground in long almost slow strides. Dryden recommended him to Burnley.

     Alan Parker spent hours in the local libraries searching for early references to Jimmy. They proved to be few and far between. During one long session in Blyth Library he went through the newspapers for 1945, ’46 and ’47. There was just one snippet from Thursday, 7 November 1946. It didn’t even get his name right. And he was certainly taller than 5’ 10” unless at that point he was still growing.

     ‘James Anderson, a 17-year old inside-right of Ashington has signed amateur forms for Burnley. While on trial in the last fortnight he impressed Burnley’s manager Cliff Britton, the former Everton and international half-back. He is 5’ 10” in height and 11st in weight. Playing for East Chevington Juniors this season he has compiled a high total of goals.’

     Burnley the place was no Nirvana immediately after the war. Mills, chimneys, smoke and fog, it was a bleak industrial town even worse than Ashington. Geoffrey Green described the Burnley that Adamson found:

     ‘Burnley the town is no beauty spot. It forms part of a backcloth of tall chimney stacks and slagheaps that scar the Lancashire countryside. On the surface it looks dingy and dirty, a cotton town that has known hard days. Yet beneath the surface a warm, friendly, dignified heart beats. And outside just out of sight, there are some fine, cold moors where even the sheep look drab. And, when the mist drifts in from the hills there is soot in it, hanging at times like a thick garland.’

     Within two weeks he had returned to the north-east, possibly homesick according to some accounts. But, according to Adamson, he was at Burnley only for the two-week trial and returned as planned to continue to play for East Chevington Juniors.

     His initial journey was horrendous enough. Just 17 and Sunderland, having been to an occasional game there, probably the furthest he had ever been away from home. The journey to Burnley involved a change of train at Newcastle, then York, then Leeds, and then either two slow bus journeys from there to Burnley; or another train from Leeds to Todmorden and a bus ride from there to Burnley. If a player landed at Todmorden he was usually met by the club secretary. Some of these trialists somehow managed to get right to Burnley by train all the way. John Angus, from Amble, another place north of Newcastle, was one of them and described to Tim Quelch his first sighting of Burnley in the 50s and how this trip was so daunting.

     ‘It took ages. I remember finally getting off the train at Manchester Road Station in Burnley. That’s the station half-way up the hill above Burnley town centre. I looked down on this town with its mill chimneys and smoggy atmosphere and it was quite unlike anything I had ever seen before.’

     Jimmy Robson was one more from the north-east who made the journey to East Lancashire in the early 50s. He too was yet another who was initially dreadfully homesick. His words along with John Angus’ could just as easily have been spoken by Jimmy Adamson.

     ‘When I first came down to Burnley I was dreadfully homesick. Remember I came from a small mining village. I hadn’t seen much life outside. A lot of us were like that. But those first three months here were hard. The digs were good but I knew the big test would come after I went home for the first time.’

     Tommy Cummings was yet another who came from the north-east. He arrived the year after Adamson, getting off the train at Todmorden. If any of these young lads, who after one of these marathon train journeys, thought that Todmorden, another place of smoke, mills and chimneys, was Burnley and were shocked at what they saw, they would find an hour later that Burnley was even worse. Assistant secretary Albert Maddox recalled meeting these boys, usually bewildered, at Todmorden on several occasions and saw first-hand how disoriented they were; some of them utterly exhausted by the whole experience.

     Tommy Cummings recalled: ‘I arrived by train in a place called Todmorden and I hadn’t been on many train journeys before. I was like a little boy looking out of the window and taking everything in. They had arranged for someone from the club to come and meet me and we caught the bus to Burnley where they had arranged digs for me.’

     Tommy also recollected that many of them married local girls. Jimmy was no exception meeting his wife May not long after he became settled in Burnley at a cinema. Once married, many of the players lived near each other.

     Years later Jimmy Adamson remembered the lonely experiences he’d had on first arrival, and they must surely have impacted on his attitudes and sympathy towards the young lads still arriving from the small villages of the north-east: ‘As soon as a youngster arrives at Turf Moor he is made to feel part of Burnley Football Club. And, just as important he knows he is not going to be tossed out after just a short spell. Every young player arriving at Turf Moor is guaranteed four or five years on the staff. In that time he gets the chance to learn the game. He is not tossed out if he fails to live up to expectations in one season. If he wants, the lad can be apprenticed to a trade. Or he usually goes on the ground staff doing all the odd jobs around the ground.’

     The manager was Cliff Britton but there were two characters at the club on the backroom staff who were the stalwarts and bedrock of most of what went on. Ray Bennion and Billy Dougall had been at Turf Moor since before the war. Dougall was a Scot who came to Burnley and played for them for eight years. Bennion a Welshman, had played for Manchester United with distinction and then for Burnley for two years. They knew every nook and cranny of the club and had coached and trained just about every player that ever arrived there, one of them being the great Tommy Lawton in his teenage years. It was Bennion who eventually made a recommendation that would change Jimmy’s life. Dougall, who had also been a miner, was first team coach until Alan Brown left, and then himself became manager until ill-health ended that. On his recovery he was brought back as physio – too valuable not to be used in some way. What the two of them didn’t know about football wasn’t worth knowing. Jimmy McIlroy acknowledges them as the most influential people he ever met. Harry Potts too was a Dougall disciple. They had a ‘boot-room’ at Turf Moor where they sat and talked about the game for hours, long before Bill Shankly ever thought of the idea at Liverpool. Even the great Matt Busby acknowledged their importance and football knowledge. Bob Lord described them as the finest servants a club could have, ‘jewels’ in their training and coaching roles. Jimmy McIroy said that many of the free kick routines came from Dougall’s coaching; his mantra was always do what the opposing team don’t expect you to do and he would have had the same influence on Jimmy Adamson as he had on Jimmy Mac. ‘Always look for the perfect ball,’ said Dougall.

     Arriving in October 1946 as a junior trialist, it was not until January 1947 that Adamson signed his first professional contract. Facing him was progression through the A B and C teams, then the reserves. At its peak, the club at one time in the 1950s had 55 players on its books. If indeed he was initially homesick, he was not the first and he was not the last. Perhaps he realised that he faced a hard slog to work his way through these teams. Perhaps he was just totally over-awed and missed his family. Maybe the gloom and murk of Burnley was just too much. But, he was only 17 and for any 17-year-old the whole thing was a huge culture shock. From the intimacy and warmth of family life and familiarity with a street filled with neighbours to the impersonal world of living in digs in a strange new world; football is littered with dozens of stories of young players who took the almost first train back home. But like so many others, he also came back to Burnley.

     He wrote about these early days in a football annual of 1960/61:

     ‘When I first went to Turf Moor as a 17-year old Northumberland Youth player from Ashington’s East Chevington Club, Burnley had eagle-eyed scouts like former left-winger Jackie Dryden, the man who persuaded me to go to Turf Moor instead of my favourites Sunderland, and wonderful coaches like Ray Bennion and Billy Dougall. It was Ray Bennion’s patient coaching that made the young Tommy Lawton into the player he became in pre-war days.

     October 1946 was the month I began my long career at Turf Moor after a two-week trial. Actually I went back to my amateur club, Chevington, to help them win several important trophies before I began in earnest at Burnley. At first I made little progress for in those days I was rated as an inside-forward. In fact, when Burnley reached the FA Cup Final in 1947 I was the club office boy and I was taken down to Wembley with the official party. I remember that when Charlton’s Chris Duffy scored the only goal, I was so upset that I got up from my seat and left the stadium.

     Until my National Service call-up I was plodding along in Burnley’s ‘A’ team as an inside-forward. Then the club did not see me for the better part of two years for I was posted to out to Aden. There, I got plenty of football, often as many as four games a week at the RAF Station.

On my demob I returned to Burnley determined to make the grade or go bust at the attempt. For the next 12 months nothing much happened to advance me very far. But then dear old Ray Bennion had the idea of trying me out as a wing-half. Like many inside-forwards who can never quite make the grade in attack, I seemed cut out for the middle line and it was a turning point. After ten games with the Central League reserves side, I was promoted to the league side at Bolton.’

     Ever present in the background was what has come to be known as ‘the austerity years.’ The war might have ended in 1945 but rationing still dominated daily life. There were shortages of everything from basic foods to clothing. Burnley FC had to appeal for coupons to buy new boots for the players. Everything was governed by coupon books, the coupons being exchanged in the shops for whatever goods were needed. The appeal must have been successful when the directors announced their gratitude for the response.

   When he returned he faced the horrendous winter of 1946/47. Not only had he to contend with learning to live in a new town but like the rest of the country it was locked in by ice and snow. The conditions lasted for months so that the league programme went on into May. It was at its worst in February and March so that grassy surfaces were seldom seen. These were the days though when the game went ahead in the most dangerous and ludicrous conditions. The pitches sometimes resembled skating rinks and after some games the players literally had to thaw out in the bath.

     Even before the Siberian conditions gripped the whole country, abnormal November rainfall and gales created horrendous conditions. It was the end of anything resembling a normal pitch as they turned into mudbaths and became heavier and heavier. Reports described teams ‘frolicking’ in the mud. Players sank deeper and deeper into the quagmires; ‘rugby scrums in the goalmouths’ became commonplace. Burnley versus Leicester summed up the conditions everywhere. In appalling conditions and fast-fading light, continuous rain before the match turned the pitch into a series of miniature lakes. Some players were near to physical collapse when the game came to an end in near darkness.

     By December the incessant rain was replaced by freezing fog. Travelling was a lottery with train journeys in unheated carriages taking hours as teams criss-crossed across the country. Players talked about ‘railway train cramp.’ Then the snow began, yet somehow teams managed to train, play games and huge crowds were the norm. Fuel shortages added to the misery and eventually disrupted some fixtures and the ‘authorities’ even began to advocate the cancellation of football games as they were interfering with coal and industrial production. The production of coal to keep the nation going became the new Battle of Britain.

     February 1947, was the point at which all normal life stopped for over two months. The cold descended just before the FA Cup fourth round on 25 January. It was the beginning of weeks of misery and yet more shortages but somehow football kept going, though postponed matches were commonplace. Huge crowds still turned up wherever there was a game and the public came in and helped to clear the pitches. Sometimes frozen plumbing in the dressing rooms meant no bath after a game. The government despaired of mid-week Cup replays where people took time off work and production stopped.

     At Turf Moor over 26,000 people turned up on 28 January, on 18 February over 28,000 and four days later 26,000; on 22 March there were 28,000 and on 4 April a staggering 31,000 with 23,000 the very next day. This was Easter with three games in the space of four days. To catch up on the backlog of games Burnley then played six games in May and even one in June. By the end of this most dreadful season Burnley won promotion despite the herculean journeys and stamina-sapping privations. The end of February marked the worst weather ever. The Labour Government could hardly cope and the Conservative slogan was ‘Shiver with Shinwell.’ And through all this, Burnley battled on through the FA Cup rounds one by one.

     They hosted Middlesbrough on ‘the worst-ever’ Tuesday afternoon, 4 March. There were burst pipes in the dressing room and to get there in the first place players had to use all their determination to beat the snow. Referee Arthur Ellis said that ‘conditions were so bad when I looked at the ground that it seemed hopeless to think about playing football at a snow-bound windswept Turf Moor.’ The application of brine and sand worked wonders not to mention men with picks and shovels levelling the jagged ice corners and ridges. The players floundered in the snow on top of the ice and their feet tripped and stumbled in the pot-holes that formed even as they played.

     By this time there had been seven weeks of cold, 43 continuous days on which snow covered the ground everywhere, and 46 nights of temperatures below freezing. The pressure was now on to simply cancel the season. How fortunate that this decision was never made. 67, 672 saw the game at Maine Road between Manchester City and Burnley in the game that decided the divisional winners. And then in April came one last sting in the tail. If Burnley v Leicester and Burnley v Middlesbrough had been endurance tests, then Burnley v Chesterfield on Easter Saturday, 5 April was the absolute rock-bottom. Two Burnley players were carried off near-frozen, and three of Chesterfield’s players ‘went under’ as soon as they left the pitch. One was put into the hot bath complete with football kit, the other simply collapsed into it.

        All of this was Jimmy Adamson’s introduction to the world of professional football. He shivered and went hungry, he huddled round his landlady’s meagre fire (when there was one); he played his first games in the junior teams on ice-rinks. In faraway Ashington, Burnley’s success was noted especially the Cup Final appearance. Even though in 1947 he was nowhere near the reserves let alone the first-team, he was a player at Burnley Football Club and Burnley Football Club was much respected (though not in Middlesbrough) so they were proud of young Jimmy Adamson. And he would never, in the following years, experience such appalling hardships again.

     He must have felt proud to be part of a club where there was promotion to Division One. The team was captained by the iron-man Alan Brown who became manager in the middle 50s when Frank Hill left. Brown became a massive influence on Jimmy Adamson through his teaching, coaching and his standards of discipline. Harry Potts who would become manager later in the 50s was the golden boy of the team. Burnley lost to Charlton Athletic in the FA Cup Final but despite this, it had been a wonderful season. It is reasonable to assume that Adamson must have been thrilled to have been a part of it, even if he was still very much a junior and well down the playing ranks.

     After his early struggles to establish himself, his first-team debut came at Bolton on 10 February 1951. He replaced Reg Attwell at right-half and kept the place for the remainder of the season. This was no mean feat; Jimmy McIlroy rated Reg Attwell as one of the best footballers he had played with. These were the days of big crowds and over 35,000 spectators filled Burnden Park to see the 1 – 1 draw with Bill Holden scoring for Burnley. Years later Adamson remembered the game vividly:

     ‘I shall always remember one incident in that game. It was nothing really but it affected me personally and led to a perpetual ‘leg-pull’ between goalkeeper Jimmy Strong and myself. At one stage of the game, Nat Lofthouse was right through and was just drawing back his lethal left foot to smash the ball past Strong. But, I cut in and booted the ball off his toe for a corner. As this was my first league game I felt I had done something wonderful in averting what seemed a certain goal. But all our goalkeeper could growl was, “Find a man can’t you?” At first I took him seriously and felt very deflated. Afterwards I discovered that Jim had realised as much as anyone how I had saved Burnley a point, but he was going to make sure I didn’t get too cocky about it.’

     He made 14 appearances that season and in the next one kept his place permanently. The decision to move him to half-back had struck gold and from then on he developed into one of the finest players of his generation. With his long legs covering the ground, he could make telling passes, was a superb tackler, and read the game superbly so that interceptions won him the ball countless times. His deft touch and control were exceptional. On top of all this he could drive forward powerfully. What was marvellous however was his partnership with the great Jimmy McIlroy. This was a partnership that grew to be one of the most influential in the game and this they maintained for over ten seasons. Mac had come into the team slightly ahead of Adamson but once they were together, a thing of beauty was created. They had an uncanny sense of where the other was positioned. If one was under pressure, the other was there to receive the pass. They were the thinkers in the team; they pulled the strings and made the others play. Most teams at this time might have had one ‘general’ who dictated the play, but Burnley had two, their thoughts and play perfectly in tune.

     His first goal for Burnley was away at Fulham in a 2 – 1 win on 22 December 1951. For more than 10 years he would be a permanent fixture although for a long spell over two seasons he reverted to centre-half, his old schoolboy position, when Tommy Cummings was out injured. Back he came to half-back in 1958 and there he would stay until retirement as a player.

     Football in the 40s, all through the 50s and maybe even the whole of the 60s was a working-class sport, watched by the working class and played by working-class footballers. It was no golden ticket to gated mansions and huge pay-cheques as it is today. Jimmy McIlroy wryly remembers his greatest achievement at Burnley was not a Division One champion’s medal, but becoming a member of the exclusive tennis club. But whilst the tennis club might have been attainable, becoming a member of the even more prestigious golf club, rubbing shoulders with the bank manager or the mill owner – was definitely not. If Burnley had given Adamson his passport away from the world of pits and toiling underground, it was certainly not a passport away from his working-class origins.