Visiting the past misty eyed

I often have a very early morning swim in the local gym. Invariably in the pool are 3 old jossers one of whom Michael I’m on chatty terms normally conversing about football. The other two,  John and Ian are also football fans supporting Burnley and Arsenal respectively. Yesterday for the first time I fell into conversation with John who rather than swim lengths tends to wade down the pool. Before long we were reminiscing about the great Burnley side of the early sixties when they’re not Manchester United, Manchester City  Liverpool who were promoted to the top tier only in 1962 – Chelsea and Arsenal did not feature as league contenders. The present Burnley side are going for Europe qualification but in the sixties they reached the quarter finals of the old Inter City Fairs Cup beating the likes of Hamburg and Napoli before losing to Eintracht Frankfurt. John recalled before the kick off the Napoli side showboating with ‘keep uppy’. Jimmy Mcilroy, the skillful inside forward of Burnley, did the same at he kick off and would not stop until everybody clapped as they did for the Napoli ball players.

I did a few more lengths and John continued wading.

When we, met again we spoke of some of the immortals in claret and blue of that era: Jimmy Adamson, Ray “Jungle Boy’’ Pointer, a nippy forward, Ralph Coates, Martin Dobson and the fiersome centre forward Andy Lochhead. John recalled his battles with Blackburn’s centre half Mike England. Both would look round to see if the referee could see them and if not would trade blows.

When I got back to my home I googled Andy Lochhead and came up with this vintage YouTube clip of Burnley putting Spurs out of the Cup in 1963 on a snow filled White Hart Lane pitch with Lochhead scoring.

Note the packed fans on the terraces, the punch up and the commentary of Bob Danvers Walker where the goalkeeper is a custodian: SPURS 0 BURNLEY 3