Edge of Darkness
PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED
Theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Serenity Prayer’ is commonly quoted as: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Other than a source of strength to recovering alcoholics the world over (every AA meeting begins with a recitation), I’ve always liked the common-sense pragmatism of the sentiment, even though it tends to get hijacked by the bone-idle or complacent to justify inaction. I have often observed fans decked out in club colours watching their teams in various pubs with a sense of detachment. I could never figure out why they could be getting so het up about a result they could not influence directly. If all the players hailed from the catchment area their team represented, this would make the devotion slightly more rational but those days are long gone and will never return. I have vague recollections of having a similar passion for my team when I was twelve but in the Autumn of early middle-age, I just didn’t get it…Moreover, part of me also thinks that watching sport is bit like watching other people have sex: I might not be as good at it as they are but I’d prefer to have a go myself rather than watch somebody else at it. And if I do have to watch, I’d prefer to do so on the telly…
Being born in Burnley in 1963 to two Turf Moor regulars who lived nearby on Casterton Avenue, it’s clear I could never follow any other team. Although my faith has lapsed on many occasions since then, it was after seeing the magnificent away win at Stoke three years ago that I surprised myself by how much I still cared… As direct participation in the sport is not an option for those like me the wrong side of fifty who had little talent for the game in the first place, I have re-calibrated my opinions of Herr Niebuhr’s dictum and my myopic perspective of the spectator as part of the spectacle.
Clearly, watching Burnley home or away has never been for the faint-hearted and the greater your masochist tendencies the better. While the team rarely labour under the burden of high expectations in the higher league and even less so when on their travels, this season has proved unusually testing for the faithful.
“I f***ing hate this place. It’s c**t city” howled a despondent compatriot in a familiar mid-Lancashire patois. It’s late August 2016 and following the splendid win over Liverpool the week before, I’ve allowed myself the luxury of a little optimism as Burnley take on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
It’s a glorious day in Fulham and an area I know well but not as an opposing fan. I needn’t have worried. After a friendly chat with some Chelsea fans in the Pret at Fulham Broadway station, I’m waylaid three times in the five minutes walk to the ground by beaming security guards who check my rucksack and wish me a great afternoon. Inside the ground, enthusiastic staff wearing ‘Burnley - We Love You’ T-Shirts serve up pints of ice-cold San Miguel while I notice the visitors’ bar has been thoughtfully decked out with photographs depicting last week’s triumph.
Well, I wasn’t expecting that…This privileged bit of West London has a richly deserved reputation of being completely up itself; arrogant and unjustifiably smug, given most of the area is a dump. Regardless, the warmth of the day and the welcome were in stark contrast to the cold reality of football at this level. Even someone with my limited knowledge of the game could work out that Chelsea were just faster, stronger, bigger and better and Burnley never stood a chance. The home crowd offered a pithy but inaccurate precis of prevailing microeconomic policy with regard to regional income disparities and redistribution (“We pay your benefits…”) prompting the anguished cry of the poet in our midst. Having lived in and around London since 1981, I would not go quite as far but could see his point.
Leicester, a couple of weeks later was no better. This time, the pin-point long balls stretched Burnley time and time again. At this stage, Leicester really did look like the champions they were with no indication of the drama that would unfold for them later in the season. Like Chelsea, the civility of Premier League life came as a bit of a shock. Helpful stewards let me park my motorbike right outside the ludicrously named ‘King Power’ stadium and offered to stow my jacket and helmet in their cabin; the gourmet sausage sandwich from the van outside the ground before kick-off would have graced any East London, hipster craft-ale pub.
A visit to St. Mary’s was next with two Saint’s fans: My oldest friend Richard, who made the trip from where he lives in New York to witness the encounter and his Dad, a former county standard referee and so blessed with an insight into the game neither Richard nor I possess. That said, even he could not fathom some of the refereeing decisions, in particular, the ‘consolation’ penalty Burnley was awarded. Not even the most ardent fan could say this was justified other than to make amends for an undetected first-half infringement that contributed to the first Southampton goal.
Basking in the low autumn sun as it set over the Bob Lord stand was the setting for an exhilarating 3-2 win over Crystal Palace. I got a brief sense of what it’s like to follow a perennially successful team. Burnley had efficiently engineered a two-goal lead before the wheels fell off after an hour and the advantage evaporated completely within twenty minutes. The last ten minutes were pure agony and the bloke next to me could bear it no more. Fearing the worst, he said he had seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory too many times before so shuffled off missing Barnes’ magical first touch to a Gudmundsson cross. Looking at this again on the TV highlights, it’s not clear where the power for this shot came from as what looked like a left-foot tap seemed to strain the top of the net.
Boxing Day in the freezing cold at Turf Moor against Middlesborough sounds like a stage direction to a J B Priestley play and this brusque, brutal encounter proved a similarly dour Northern affair resulting in eleven bookings. Thankfully, Andre Gray’s late goal bobbled over the line to the relief of the home fans who had braved the elements. Other than the crushing disappointment of losing in the last ten minutes, some of the visiting fans no doubt enjoyed the day out with many sporting just T-shirts suggesting the climate must have seemed like the Cote D’Azure in early spring compared to back home.
A few weeks later, Lars, a Swedish-banker colleague in New York of Richard’s had carefully orchestrated a weekend with his Swedish pals who still live there to see their national hero, Ibrahimovic, play for Manchester United against Liverpool. Having organised the trip with characteristic Nordic precision, Sky decided to reschedule the match to Sunday leaving a bunch of Swedes with nothing to do in Manchester on a cold Saturday in January other than get totally lagered-up, something they seem quite adept at with or without the distraction of watching football. Looking at other Premier League fixtures, he asked Richard: “Do you know anything about Burnley? They're playing your team on Saturday and it looks quite close to Manchester…”
Working in concert with my mother, we managed to get him all the tickets he needed and I met him in a pub opposite Turf Moor to hand them over. With commendable Nordic politeness they had all bought Burnley regalia and then with a complete lack of Nordic reserve, hollered their support as the saintly Joey Barton’s slightly scuffed free kick found it’s way through the ramshackle wall and evaded the keeper to send the Saints back south empty-handed.
Two months in the wilderness followed with fixtures in outposts too remote for me, so it was not until Manchester United visited that I managed to pick up the trail again. I went with my mother and never have either of us heard the Long Side so quiet. A collective nervousness appeared to have set in with a realisation that having come so far and gotten so close to securing survival, it could go horribly wrong in the final weeks of the season.
Prior to visiting Selhurst Park on 29 April, Burnley’s last away win in the capital at the highest level was on 5 October 1974. The date is memorable for me for two reasons. Firstly, seeing Burnley go two up before half time only for Spurs to claw their way back leaving the great Leighton James to clinch it from the edge of the area is the stuff of Fairy Tales (assuming I’ve remembered all this correctly) but it also marked my first visit to a Pizza Express. My dad had discovered one in Hampstead near where he worked and we trooped off en famille before heading over to N17.
For the first time, I realised eating was something to be enjoyed rather than endured and this first memory of an American Hot left such a lasting impression, I’ve only been tempted to try another variant once. In 1988, having recently visited Venice and with the balance of my mind disturbed and ever open-minded, I once ordered a Veneziana in the Blackheath branch, tearfully wishing to donate 20p to stop Venice sinking as the menu promised. It turns out the evidence of this possibility is inconclusive and my lapse of judgement remains a source of lasting regret.
As we now know, the Crystal Palace game proved pivotal as the three points from this solitary away win cleaved a gap at the foot of the table that never closed. Defending a single goal lead well past eighty minutes was a cause of an exquisite, collective pain with complete strangers grasping each other’s forearms to relieve it. From my seat a few rows back from the touchline, I got both the dull thud of Andre Gray’s perfect connection and the computer game view of being on precisely the same line of the shot as the second goal crashed into the back of the net. All hell broke loose. Behind me the usually impassive, imposing Alistair Campbell we are familiar with on TV was standing on his seat shaking hands with everyone around him, screaming deliriously. The bloke next to me hugged me; everyone around me hugged each other. For all the disappointment and the frustration of the season: the squandered draws against Spurs away and Manchester City at home; the two late and undeserved losses against Arsenal; the paranoia-inducing refereeing atrocities and other affronts to fair play and good luck the team had endured, this made it all worthwhile and all the sweeter for it. Lars from New York texted me having seen the action unfold on TV in a Manhattan bar. Later, a couple of Peroni Grand Riserva, a large glass of Chianti and the obligatory American Hot at Pizza Express in Wapping marked the perfect end to a perfect day.
I didn’t catch the home game against West Brom that all but clinched survival and so the gut-wrenching late away loss at Bournemouth and the final game at Turf Moor versus West Ham were slightly anti-climatic. Good job really as the players looked absolutely knackered. When a grim-faced Sean Dyche (channelling, I think, Bob Hoskins at the end of ‘The Long Good Friday’) led his squad on a lap around Turf Moor at the end of this final game, this did not look like the celebration of a victorious, returning army but one of battle-hardened warriors with a collective realisation that in a few short weeks, they will have to start all over again.