Irvine Dinner-Dave Thomas Reflects

By Dave Thomas
October 23 2005

Celebrated Clarets author, Dave Thomas gives his view about the dinner held in honour of Willie Irvine last Friday night.

Willie Irvine Dinner-Friday Night 21st October 2005

Delightful night with a real family atmosphere. Legends sat two to every other table so that no one was far away from a Burnley great. Their wives sat on their own table happily chatting about dresses and handbags and stuff while the men talked about real matters of our glory days.

Summerbee guest speaker was nicely droll and pithy telling some great stories limiting himself to just 5 F words as he is trying to cut down.

Several legends did a brief tribute to Willie none better than Jimmy Macs.

Willie's thanks speech at the end left a few people with moist eyes, it really was a warm genuine and moving speech and you could have heard a pin drop.

Just under 200 people attended and the legends were great, chatting talking, mixing. Every so often there was an interval so that people could have a wander and chat to them. Can you imagine a legends dinner in 10 or 20 years. Who would you say from the present mob could be a legend.
these dinners will one day fade away.

Brian O Neil clearly loves every visit back to Burnley. Coates is just a delightful friendly bloke. All of them signed pictures and programmes all night. The bottom line is that they are from an era when they were just the bloke next door - not like today's Premiership generally vain unapproachable pampered protected lot.

Next one in a year, better on a Saturday maybe. Start saving up now, they aren't cheap to put on hence the price. Friday would just have broken even though it wasn't done to raise money.

Dave Thomas

23rd  October 2005

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Many thanks to Dave for writing this article, this is greatly appreciated by all the team at 'The Longside'