Jimmy Mac The Prince - Authors Note And Prologue

                                    AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Where possible in this biography I have used parts of chapters from Jimmy Mac’s own book Right Inside Soccer. I am grateful for his permission to do so. There seemed little point writing sections of this book when his own chapters fit into the narrative perfectly. But, what I have done with them sometimes, again with Jimmy’s permission, is to adapt them by slightly altering the style, occasionally changing the verb tenses, and amending the words so that they read a little more like Jimmy would say them. I think this is what Brian Glanville, one of the great football writers, meant, when he once said that Right Inside Soccer was too much David Jack (his ghost writer) and not enough Jimmy McIlroy.

     The chapter I wrote about Jimmy in the first No Nay Never provided a good prologue without much need for change, other than moving some paragraphs to other parts of the book. Similarly, the pages I wrote about his transfer in Harry Potts Margaret’s Story, are used in their entirety, save for a small number of minor changes or additions. There seemed little point in re-writing them.

     I grew up with Jimmy McIlroy, in that my boyhood and youth coincided with his years at Burnley. For over four years I was able to see him play. For that reason, even though I never met him personally until 2003, I feel like I have known him all my life. Maybe all we football fans feel this way when we have a particular favourite or hero who dates back to our formative years. They are just such an integral part of our lives. Say their name, years later, and we see them again in an instant, and our minds flood with memories of the games we saw them play, and what we were doing with our own lives at that time. It is a theme I have tried to incorporate into the book. The writing took a year and I have also tried to incorporate the events of that year into the chapters.

     We separated in 1963. He went to Stoke City and I went to college. His name continued to crop up over the years and I was an avid reader of his sports columns in the local Press during his years as a journalist.

     And then I met him face to face for the first time ever. I remember it was a Sunday evening when I picked up the phone to speak to him to arrange the visit. I hesitated for what seemed an age, nervous as a kitten. Years of being a Headteacher doesn’t prepare you for moments like this. Our heroes do this to us. But such talk embarrasses him enormously. This book is my tribute to him and a heartfelt thankyou.

Dave Thomas April 2009

Prologue

      He can walk through Burnley and football supporters of a certain generation will stop and smile when they see him. He can be in one of the town’s supermarkets, Tesco or Sainsbury’s, or in Marks and Spencer’s, and he will be stopped by tongue-tied admirers who engage him in conversation as he tries to do his shopping. He can be approached for autographs by grandfathers who will then tell their grandsons who this man was and what he meant, and still means to the town of Burnley.

     He arrived in 1950 and has been in the town ever since. From the first game he ever played in the club’s first-team he became an instant fixture in the side for the next 12 years. He played not far short of 500 games for Burnley Football Club, when footballers made no great fortunes, and 55 times for Northern Ireland. In a football age when there were so many great players and football heroes he was one of the greatest of them all. In 1999 he was recognised by the Football League as one of the 100 best-ever players. One of the great stands at the football ground is named after him. His name is on the plaque of legends on the outside wall of that stand. In 2008 he received a special achievement award from all the Burnley supporters’ clubs. He is a Freeman of the Borough of Burnley. At club dinners when he speaks, you can hear a pin drop as people listen to his soft, gentle Irish brogue. His name is Jimmy McIlroy, but just say Jimmy Mac and everyone knows who he is.

     Ask him about football and the modern game and he will say he doesn’t understand it. When he played, two teams went out and both went out to win. Now he sees it mostly as a game where two teams don’t go out to win, but simply to avoid losing. He valued skill as a player and as a coach and manager. Now he bemoans its absence other than in just a very small band of the top players. Where once he loved the players who could dribble with the ball and take chances, now all he sees are players who are told to pass the ball and not risk losing it. Football has changed since he played and little of it for the better. Other than Manchester United and Arsenal there are few teams he looks forward to watching. It is a sad indictment of the game today.

     The first time I ever picked up the phone to contact him was several years ago; I hesitated for an age before I plucked up the courage to speak to him. Then, years later when I suggested we write this book, the first thing he said was, “But who on earth wants to read about an old has-been like me?” A little later he added, “Does anyone today have any idea who I am?” He was genuinely apprehensive.

     With a wry sense of humour he will say that the only people who remember him now are the senior citizens of Burnley and he will tell the story of how one day he was walking down the street near his home and was approached by a little old dear who was 80 if she was a day. She stopped a few yards in front of him and was clearly awe-struck. “Jimmy Mac, my hero,” she exclaimed wide-eyed. “Ah, you can’t possibly be old enough to have seen me play,” he replied smiling, making her day. He always was a charmer.

     Jimmy’s own book Right Inside Soccer was published in 1960. It was a typical football book of the age, slim, only 128 pages, and short on detail. But what it did include were many of Jimmy’s own opinions about the game, some of them quite controversial, even radical. But it certainly never gave a rounded portrait of him. How could it? Stopping in 1960 it did not cover the Cup Final or his totally unexpected transfer; they would come later. Although there was a chapter called ‘Limping along the road to the Championship’, in fact the chapter was mostly about one particular Cup game against Blackburn Rovers. The ghost-writer was David Jack, a leading football writer of the time, but the eminent writer Brian Glanville’s comment to Jimmy was that “it was too much David Jack and not enough Jimmy McIlroy.” It was reportedly the Italian speaking Brian Glanville who once spoke at length to Jimmy about moving to Italy, acting almost as a go-between. Nothing happened.

     As soon as his book was published a whole crowd of us who formed the football team at Todmorden Grammar School bought and devoured it from cover to cover. The man was our idol. We played for the school team in the morning and then rushed to Turf Moor for first team and reserve games on alternate Saturdays. If there was a tough game coming up we’d simply say “Jimmy Mac will win it for us.”

     Brian Glanville, always a McIlroy admirer, penned a piece about him that is as fresh now as it was then. He called it The Magic of McIlroy and wrote it at a time when Jimmy Mac was at his absolute peak.

     ‘Burnley’s Jimmy McIlroy, at 28, is almost unquestionably the finest inside forward in Britain; more versatile and fluent that Johnny Haynes, more consistent at international level than Ivor Allchurch, more mature than Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Jimmy Greaves. McIlroy is above all a stylist and a perfectionist, with an utter mastery of technique. Every pass, every flick, every swerve is studied and controlled. His speed off the mark is amazing. Few who saw will have forgotten his magnificent burst, half the length of the field, in a League game at Tottenham a year ago. Burnley were a goal down, there was a minute to play and all seemed over. Suddenly he got the ball in the inside-right position and accelerated like a racing car, leaving man after man behind him, boring irresistibly into the Tottenham, half. Then, he flicked the ball accurately across goal, where Cheesebrough had only to put out a foot and touch it over the line.

     My abiding memories of him are his delicate way of taking penalties and sending goalkeepers the wrong way; the way he could work his way along the goal line into the penalty area, fooling them with a shake of the hips and a shimmy, and his ability to take a ball into the corner by the flag, shield it, keep it, and while away precious minutes towards the end of a game. The legendary Everton hardman Jimmy Gabriel called it “doing a Jimmy McIlroy” when he did it himself in a Wembley Cup Final. Perhaps only Leighton James since then at Burnley has had the ability to ghost his way past an opponent as if he wasn’t there. He was never known for sustained pace but what Jimmy possessed was a burst of speed over the first few yards that got him round his man on countless occasions. Matt Busby wrote the foreword to his book, which is tribute indeed, mentioning his subtlety, the ability to find space, to take command of a game, and his sheer skill. His use of the word ‘dazzling’ is not inappropriate, nor is the word ‘genius’.

     In a family where there were five girls and just one boy, himself, it is perhaps surprising that he became a footballer. But, with a football every Christmas and his father and uncle being players themselves of some ability, the foundations were laid. It was by quirk of fate that he joined Burnley, not Bolton Wanderers as a teenager. The promise of a visit from someone from Burnden Park was never kept.

     His first impressions of Burnley were less than favourable. All he could think of were the green hills of Antrim. It took him months to understand the accent, though it has to be said, it was a problem that worked both ways.

     The chapters of his own book look at his early life and the early days at Turf Moor. For this book some of them have been expanded and more detail has been added. The ones chosen look at his early life, being a rookie at Turf Moor, his first season, FA Cup disappointments, the Championship season, the rumours of transfers, and his international career. Much of this introduction has been adapted from material in No Nay Never Volume One.

     For me, 1959/60 was the first full season of watching the McIlroy magic. With a gang of pals I was there at a baking hot Elland Road for the first game of the season against Leeds United. I can still remember the steam train journey and a long walk from the station to the ground. Burnley won 3 – 2 and it was a first sighting of a long, tall, gangly, giraffe-like centre half called Jack Charlton. I have a recollection of a disallowed goal in the final seconds of the game just after the whistle had gone, except that we didn’t know whether it counted or not, and we came home thinking it had been a 3 – 3 draw. None of us could have had any idea that by the end of that season we would be champions or that in the final nail-biting game, a half-fit McIlroy would spend several of the last minutes doing what he always did do well – “doing a Jimmy McIlroy,” screening and holding the ball by the corner flag to wind down the clock.

     I had no chance of seeing that final game but sat by the radio all night waiting for the final result. Burnley scored within four minutes but then City equalised. For the first goal there is a memorable picture of Pointer, arms wide in jubilation, watching the ball cross the line. For the second Burnley goal there is a memorable picture of Meredith shooting it home with this time McIlroy watching. From that point on Jimmy Mac tried all he knew to slow the game down and retain possession. But by the end, nerves were raw and voices hoarse as Manchester City did their utmost to score again.

     The Burnley chairman Bob Lord once said that Burnley was famous for two things – cotton and the Burnley Building Society. Supporters might add a couple of others – the Championship and Jimmy McIlroy.   

     My father always vividly remembered another season, season 1952/53 when another good side might have won the title. Jimmy Mac was in that side as well. Once he came into the side in 1950 it would be an amazing 13 years until 1963 when he lost his place.

     At the Millennium Celebration game on 28^th December, 1999, he was publicly honoured when he officially opened the ‘Jimmy McIlroy Stand’. The emotion in his voice as he made his speech from the pitch was obvious to all. It was typical of the graciousness of the man that he suggested that it should have been named ‘The Champions Stand’ in honour of all the team. In an interview with Frank Keating a week later in The Guardian he spoke about the ceremony. He talked about how unbelievable it was that he and the team should be together again on the same field where they’d had all their triumphs. Only Angus and Adamson were missing. Each one came out for an individual reception from the crowd. On the field his imagination took him back to a pass here, a tackle, a goal or a shuffle. He spoke glowingly of his fellow players. He talked about one particular game against Leicester City where it seemed they could do no wrong, when the football they played was perfect and their display was so magnificent that neither crowd nor team wanted it to end. When it clicked into perfection it must have been breathtaking to watch, he said.

     The game at Leicester he referred to was on September 9^th, 1961 and was won 6 – 2 with goals from Connelly (2), Robson (2), Pointer and Harris. This was the season that Burnley were frequently magnificent with scores of four, five, six and seven throughout the season until near the end when they just ran out of stream and adrenalin. A second title slipped tamely away. In the final four games they took just two points. In the League alone they scored a phenomenal 101 goals most of which were scored in the first thirty games. There was the Wembley Cup Final and they were so close to a wonderful Double achievement.

     Throughout that season how privileged I was to have seen him play so often and to be able to recall the things he did; his beautiful passing skills, the penalties he put away, the rough treatment he received without ever retaliating, the dummies with which he used to send a player one way whilst he went the other, the way he schemed and controlled a game and always had so much time and space, the mark of a truly great player. He was never a man mountain like Emile Heskey, or a player with pace over distance like the early Anelka. To look at he was quite middling, quite average (perhaps just a little on the stocky side) but his average appearance belied his inherent skill and magic.

     One thing not often mentioned is his stamina. These were days of relentless rough treatment, mud bath pitches, playing on with injuries, and three games in four days at Easter.

     The nearest comparison you might make in recent times is Zinedine Zidane, except Jimmy never head-butted anyone in a World Cup Final. Players like this go past others as if they just aren’t there. There is no flamboyance or elaborate ostentation. There were none of the Ronaldo circus tricks or triple step-overs with a somersault and twist for Jimmy Mac. There was just a touch, a flick, a feint: or show the ball to an opponent and then with a short burst of acceleration whip it past him. Sometimes there was a shake of the hips so subtle you might miss it. And on top of all this were the superb passing skills. The talents of people like this are instinctive and natural, but there they are in the thick of things, pulling the strings. They are the schemers, the generals, the magicians, and they make it all look so easy. They run the game and dictate the play. When once every team had such a player; today it is so different.

    He was forever in demand for games outside of Burnley. A letter discovered in a pile of folders in the ancient Albert Maddox
office under the old Cricket Field stand politely requests that he be allowed to play in a testimonial at Sheffield United for Jimmy Hagan. There were many others when his gracious presence was sought. He played for the Football League as well as a Great Britain Xl. In another file was a whole heap of correspondence relating to the Burnley versus Reims European Cup game. One of them relates to the insurance cover needed for the trip to France. All the team except McIlroy were valued at £20,000. Significantly, Jimmy’s insurance value was £30,000.

     My first visit to see him was in 2004 at his immaculate home in Burnley. I asked him the questions that he must have been asked countless times and become tired of answering. But he answered with unfailing politeness and patience. The ‘59/60 title win at Manchester City “still brings goosebumps just to think about it,” he told me. “In all honesty I don’t know how we did it. I remember my thigh being strapped up, and the day before I said to Billy Dougal that no way would I be able to run or sprint. Dougal just looked at me and announced I’d be playing no matter what. What a night it was, although it didn’t sink in at the time. Little Trevor Meredith one of our reserves scored the winning goal. In any other team he would have been a regular.”

     In ‘61/62 when the club were in sight of both League and Cup he explained “we just ran out of steam. Most of us felt like physical wrecks. There were too many games crammed into one hectic period. We just couldn’t sustain it and it all faded away.” His simple explanation was that their legs and energy just gave out at the end. There was just one win in the last ten games and the final result was a humiliating 0 – 4 defeat away at Sheffield Wednesday. “The sparkle had gone,” said Jimmy omitting to mention that he had missed five of them because of injury.

     He lived and played in an era when the financial rewards were nothing like those of today, but he doesn’t begrudge what modern players earn. Nor were there high definition televisions with huge screens in the corner of every living room spotlighting misdemeanours, fouls, flare-ups and confrontations with referees. The worst and most disgraceful of these was perhaps a few seasons ago when Manchester United’s Van Nistelrooy was set upon by half the Arsenal team led by Keogh at Old Trafford. “But it happened all the time in my day,” Jimmy commented. Today’s hardmen have nothing on Eddie Clamp, the ex Wolves and Stoke City halfback. Jimmy played both against him, and with him.

     “There’s nothing new going on. Players were just as ‘naughty’ then as they are now in fact off the field probably worse. But there weren’t tabloids and reporters intent on revealing and publishing all. There weren’t cameras everywhere and it never made headline news. In fact, more often than not, the reporters who travelled with the players joined in. And the other difference was that in my day the Grosvenor Hotel was way beyond the footballer’s pay packet. Girls hung round footballers then just as they do now. I can well remember a night out with the boys in my younger days of course. Maybe it was the dancehall or somewhere like that and there were always girls coming up to us. One of our players was approached by one girl after another and he asked each one ‘do yer do owt?’ If the answer was no she was told to ‘bugger off’.” Jimmy in his younger days could certainly have taught George Best a thing or two.  

     On the subject of wages Jimmy recalled that his dealings with Bob Lord were generally short and sweet. “When the maximum wage was abolished and it was announced that Fulham were going to pay Johnny Haynes £100 a week Bob Lord asked me what I thought I was worth. Hopefully I said £60. He looked at me and I waited… and waited… and then he spoke. ‘And there’ll be tax to pay as well I suppose,’ he said. ‘So you’d better have £80’. I left the room smiling.”

     In a career that was so long and glittering, Jimmy McIlroy finds
it hard to single out particular occasions that are significant or extra special. One of his favourite stories that he often tells is about one of his first ever games as an 18 year old. “It was against Portsmouth at Fratton Park and Portsmouth had some great players then and they’d recently been champions. They had Jimmy Scoular who was one of the hardest ever players. Scoular was built like Desperate Dan with legs like tree trunks and he’d obviously decided to leave an impression one me.” (The tackle by Darren Purse on Andrew Cole in the Burnley Cardiff game in April of 2008 pales into insignificance in comparison.) “I had the ball on the touchline and in he came at me. Well, he took me over the edge of the pitch, across the track round the edge, and even over a low fence that separated the spectators. You can tell the force at which I was hit because the spectator my boot struck had to be taken away for treatment. After treatment of my own by our trainer, a cold sponge on the back of the neck to bring me round, I came back on. Not long after Scoular comes up to me and says, ‘Listen you little Irish Fenian bastard that’s nothing to what I’ll do to you next time’. But I’m a Protestant I told him wide-eyed. Well, Scoular looked at me open-mouthed, quite aghast, with a look of anguish on his face. Gently he put his arms around me and said, ‘Ah God son, did I hurt you?’ After that I never had any trouble from him, in fact I can’t remember him ever tackling me again.”

     In that first meeting I ever had with Jimmy I can well remember sitting facing him as he retold these tales. As he spoke I looked at him like a small schoolboy might sit in awe of his headmaster (if that’s what they still do these days). He must have been so weary of talking to yet another fan about yesteryear and this was at a time when football in general was pretty wearisome to him. But he never showed it. The word gentleman would not go amiss.

   “Do you know,” he said, “the one thing I regret is that I never had the chance to play on the perfect pitches that players have now. The progress that has been made with all-year grass is astonishing. If there’s been one major change other than the money it’s the quality of the grass and any old player will tell you that. I remember some of the conditions we played in just wouldn’t be allowed now. There was the Cup-tie at Bradford. It was game when with twelve minutes to go and us losing 2 – 0 I actually pinched myself to make sure it was really happening. I’ve never known mud like it. When we came out it had been rolled quite firmly and we passed the ball around quite easily or the first 20 minutes or so. But then it just became a soggy nightmare. I remember the last minute equaliser. Pilky floated a free kick across and I jumped like everybody else did. All I remember is landing flat on my face in the mud and seeing the ball trickle over the line. And then in total contrast a few days later the replay was played on a pitch so frozen it was like a skating rink.

     “Then there are the lighter balls used today. They bend and swerve and go in from 30 yards. In my day they were so heavy a 20 yard goal was a rarity and any goalkeeper would be annoyed if he let one in. Today it can be in the net from way out before a goalkeeper can even move. They can bend shots so much that it starts out heading straight at the goalkeeper but it can finish up in the top corner of the net it’s swerved so much.”

     Today Jimmy McIlroy lives in an elegant semi-detached house on the edge of Burnley not far from the spot where the Tottenham team coach years ago was coming down the hill in mist and fog and Jimmy Greaves uttered the immortal words: “Blimey, where are we going, Brigadoon?” It is something that has never bothered Jimmy who professes that from the day he arrived he has never wanted to leave. He still watches the Clarets, (enthusiasm and interest very much rekindled by the entertaining play of Owen Coyle’s attacking team and Carling Cup exploits) plays golf and is a skilled painter. He smiles when he says he can’t walk 20 yards without someone wanting to chat about the old days or wanting to know if he thinks they will win on the coming Saturday.

     On Saturday February 7^th, 2004 he was given a standing ovation as he walked round the pitch at the finale of the parade of Legends. At 2.00 pm the plaque had been unveiled outside the ground honouring 25 Burnley ‘greats’. 45 minutes later he received a marvellous reception from the thousands of people inside the ground. The town and people love this man for what he has given to them, for the loyalty he has shown and the affection and dignity with which he always speaks of the place. At the dinner later that evening in the James Hargreaves Suite over 300 people again gave him a rapturous welcome as he took his place at the high table. “If only Bob Lord could see me now,” he began, as he made a short but moving speech, going on to ask “why me” and to suggest that there were so many other worthy legends who should be honoured – Halley, Boyle, Watson, Dawson, Kelly, and many more upon whom the club’s history had been built. What he wanted to do, he said, was to thank the supporters for the honour. And of course he spoke of Burnley the town, of how he had never in his life contemplated leaving, and that even playing for Stoke City, he had travelled every day from Burnley rather than move. There were more than just a few moist eyes as he sat down to more rapturous applause.

      Let the next paragraphs of this introduction be a tribute to the man’s genius, for that is surely what he was, and it is what Ken Bates who saw him play many times, still calls him. If he played today, what price would he command if pursued by the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United or Real Madrid? In December 1958 this was written about him:

      McIlroy illuminated the murk of Manchester with one of his star performances. He was the mentor, the master magician whose sorcery conjured the ball round, through, between heavier bodies and left them sprawling. They tackled him in pairs, they crowded him in threes; he showed them the ball, flicked it away from them, worked it on with little skips and feints and shuffles, while the crowd gazed on in silent wonder. He was so baffling that one received the impression that had the laws of football allowed it, he would have waved one of his magic feet over the ball three times, and produced it, reduced in size from the referee’s pocket.

    And then in November 1959 of the Championship season, Burnley demolished Wolves 4 – 1 at Turf Moor with goals from Pointer (2), Connelly and Robson. 27,793 people witnessed another masterclass described by Noel Wild a local journalist.    

       He funnelled the ball to every tactical advantage in midfield. He plotted and charted the course of practically every Burnley attack. He juggled at the corner flag, wiggled wickedly, slowed the game down one minute and then streaked away like an electric eel with a sprint which rivalled the acceleration of even Stanley Matthews and Ton Finney. He sometimes jabbed short passes forward, and other times swung 40 yarders out to the left wing. That day Jimmy McIlroy cascaded all soccer’s arts and graces before his baying audience. It was Rhapsody in Claret and Blue.

       After a 4 – 1 thrashing of Wolves, Alec Johnson wrote:

      If ever there was a one-man show, this was it. After 15 minutes Jimmy McIlroy kindled a soccer flame and kindled it with wafts of soccer greatness. By the end of the game the fire had roared through the Wolves’ house and burned it to the ground. McIlroy stands 5’ 8”. Put him in football boots and give him a ball and there is a giant. Players have never stumbled and staggered in front of one man like this. After 22 minutes he arrived dramatically on the scene dancing past Flowers. Then, again he went round Flowers, who, a few seconds later became so confused, he passed to Pointer – and the ball was slammed in the net. Ninety seconds later the extraordinary McIlroy did it again. Weaving through, he sent a pass to Connelly, who angled it to Robson… and it was in.

     Yes, they should really have hung a sign outside the ground before the match reading – ‘Presenting McIlroy and his magicians, turning Wolves into lambs’.

    And then, in 1963, this charismatic player, this exquisite performer, this man who could inspire such prose and rapture, and who some said was Burnley Football Club and was the club’s greatest ever player, was placed on the transfer list and within days, with almost indecent haste, was sold. Some supporters swore they would never attend another game. A Burnley side without the incomparable McIlroy; the town was stunned and disbelieving. Little else was talked about for days. It filled page after page in national and local newspapers. People gathered on street corners to talk and read the headlines. After nigh on thirteen years of wonderful service, he was going.

     But what was the cause? It came quite out of the blue. What could have prompted it? Exactly what was it that happened?

Lots more to follow, keep an eye out for Chapter 1 of this fantastic Biography of Jimmy Mac Burnley's greatest???