Even in mining a man was free to move from one pit to another; not that any mass migrations ever took place simply because a man felt like it. When Jimmy Adamson signed his contract in January 1947 he virtually signed his life to Burnley Football Club until George Eastham’s campaign for freedom of movement was successful in 1964 when his case at last came to court.

     It is a myth that despite the contractual problems, footballers were financially better off than other working men. Of course the top players on the maximum permissible wage were better paid, and some like Tommy Lawton, Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and Denis Compton had incomes from advertising. In 1952 the average manual wage in the country was £8 13 shillings and footballers could certainly earn more than this with a £14 wage during the season and £10 in the summer; but that was only if they were actually on the maximum wage. Many were not and Players’ Union figures found that only a fifth of footballers were on the top wage at this time. Even in 1955 the union put the average wage for a footballer at only £8 and by this time factory workers were earning almost £11 a week. There was a vast difference between playing for lowly Darlington and mighty Tottenham Hotspur.

     The minimum retaining wage in the early 50s was only £6 a week and the word ‘retaining’ was simply a polite term for the way in which footballers were bound to their clubs. How unfair it was that whilst a footballer could be ‘chained’ to a club for the rest of his playing career, he only enjoyed a 12 month contract. He might well have a club house at a favourable rent, but he and his family could be turfed out of that house as soon as he was unwanted. For a jobbing footballer of average ability they were uncertain times.

     At the end of a season a number of things could happen to a player. He might be kept on, in which case there would be a sigh of relief. He could be put up for sale at a fair price. He could be put up for a sale at a ridiculous price that no other club would want to match. He could be retained but on reduced wages. He could be retained and paid no wages. He could ask for a pay rise and refuse to sign. In that case he would definitely be paid no wages. He could demand a transfer that might be ignored, or again a price was put on his head that was too high. He could simply walk out but if that happened the club still held his registration and could prevent him playing anywhere else. Even during the season a new manager might walk in and without consultation reduce the wages of every player. There was nothing those players could do except protest.

       The majority of players who wanted a move or a pay rise simply gave in. Some left the game altogether. A small number who did not want to lose their independence had a full-time day job, trained a couple of times a week in the evenings and turned out for the team on Saturdays.

     As the season neared its end the ‘retained list’ dominated a player’s thoughts. At some clubs they were called into the manager’s office one by one to be informed of the decision to offer another contract. At some clubs it was a small note in the final wage packet of the season; at other clubs the list was pinned up on a notice board in a prominent place for all to see. At a very small number it was a registered letter through the post-box. It was worst when there might be a huddle of players outside the manager’s door all waiting together to be told the good or bad news. Crestfallen faces indicated the worst as one by one they walked out of the office. It might be they were simply no longer wanted. It might be that they were on the ‘for sale’ list. If that was the case they worried about what interim pay they might receive. If they were in a club house and it was bad news it was a case of wondering if you would be asked to vacate it. And even whilst you were living in a club house a new player might be brought to take a look at it.

       Not until 1964 was this system changed. Prior to this, Bobby Seith at Burnley in the later 50s stood up to this iniquitous system and the dictatorial Bob Lord. He insisted on his right to move and told the club if this was not allowed he would simply leave the game and find other employment. Seith was fortunate in that this was no idle threat; he was a fully qualified chiropodist. He was allowed to move and went to Dundee back in his native Scotland. Prior to that, Burnley winger Brian Pilkington was sold to Bolton Wanderers simply because Chairman Bob Lord insisted on it. Pilkington had no wish to leave at all, but a fee had been agreed and with no choice in the matter, off he went. It was one of dozens of similar stories up and down the land when a player had to uproot his family and home sometimes to move to the other end of the country. Conversely, earlier, when Pilkington had the opportunity to move to Manchester United after the Munich ‘plane disaster, Bob Lord would not allow it.

     It was George Eastham though, who freed footballers from these punitive restrictions and archaic conditions of service that dominated their lives. Eastham, a top player and member of the 1966 England World Cup squad, was in dispute with his employers at Newcastle United over the conditions of the club house he was supposed to live in and also the job outside of football the club had arranged in order to circumvent the maximum wage rule. On top of all that they attempted to stop him playing for the England U23 side.   Unable to leave, Eastham went on strike at the end of the 1959/60 season saying later:

     ‘Our contract would bind us to a club for life. Most people called it the ‘slavery contract.’ We had virtually no rights at all and it was often the case that the guy on the terrace not only earned more than us, though there’s nothing wrong with that, but he had more freedom of movement than us. People in business or teaching were able to hand in their notice and move on. We weren’t and that was wrong.’

   In October of 1960 Newcastle relented when they realised that there was no possibility of Eastham moving back. He had moved south to work for Ernie Clay who later became chairman of Fulham. They sold him to Arsenal but Eastham continued the fight arguing that Newcastle owed him unpaid wages and bonuses, and that the whole system was an unfair restraint of trade. Backed by the PFA who provided £15,000 for the legal fees the case went to High Court in 1963. Mr Justice Wilberforce rejected the claim for unpaid wages saying that as he was on strike this was at Newcastle’s discretion, but he did change football forever when he ruled that the retaining system was unreasonable. The ‘retention’ element was over-hauled and transfer tribunals were introduced to settle disputes. It was a landmark decision and the maximum wage had already been abolished thanks to the work of Jimmy Hill. Whilst excellent for the footballers these two alterations to football employment and salaries were alas bad news for the town clubs who could no longer compete with the city clubs on equal terms. One by one the East Lancashire clubs, Blackpool, Blackburn, Bolton and Preston were relegated. Burnley were the last, hanging on until 1971. 

     Once in the Burnley first-team, Jimmy Adamson, subjected to all these employment shackles, was a fixture unless injuries intervened. It is reasonable to say that three people hugely influenced him and his life. Alan Brown he met for the first time when Brown was captain of the first team in 1947 and would then later become his manager. At this point he would have been a distant, lofty figure to the teenage Adamson. Harry Potts was in that team of 1947 until 1950 and as Adamson made his way into the reserve side, he would have played against Harry in practice games. And then there was the legendary Bob Lord; lord and chairman of all he surveyed for over two decades at Turf Moor. Lord did not become chairman of the club until 1955 but was there before that in the background, unsuccessfully attempting to join the board in 1950, following the players and making a great favourite of Harry Potts. In 1951 he did join the board and once he was chairman dominated every aspect of the club.

        Alan Brown was from Corbridge, Northumberland, and his father was a painter and decorator. He attended Grammar School, was an outstanding athlete and wanted to be a schoolteacher as well as a professional footballer. But, being one of four children in a far from affluent family ruled out a university education during the depression. However, through good fortune he was able to join Huddersfield Town because his cousin was captain there. It was his experiences as a youth there that soured his interest in football so that in fact he left the game and joined the police force returning to the game later. Because of the player-retention system he could only return to Huddersfield.

     He once confessed that he disliked ‘The Iron Man’ name that was bestowed on him. It followed him everywhere. The defence in which he’d played at Burnley was known as ‘the iron curtain.’ His first post as manager, after a coaching post at Sheffield Wednesday, was at Burnley where he had played centre-half with such distinction. He later related that the first thing he heard on the grapevine after his Burnley appointment was that four of the leading players who enjoyed a drink and a cigarette, had muttered and grumbled about him saying that ‘if yon so and so comes here I’m in for a transfer.’ Quite how they would have worked a transfer in those feudal days is a debatable point.

     His creed was simple: ‘I tell all my lads under 21 that they must never let me see them with a cigarette. With those over 21, I advise against it; I advise against a drink as well. When we’re in public as a club you’ll never see a drink. Suppose a man’s sitting in a railway carriage with a glass of beer in front of him. Little boys may see it and think it’s the right thing to do. If adults see it they may put two and two together to make five. I make sure I never have to send for a man for boozing. I ask, no demand, the highest code of conduct.’

     On arrival as manager his problem was that he was seen as such an aloof, cold man with all his values so set in their ways as to make him totally unyielding and lacking in any form of compromise. He was totally committed to truth and frankness, to what was morally demanded and legally right. When he left the game and became a policeman for two years it affirmed his beliefs even more. All that might have been just about tolerable with the four grumblers, but it produced an unbendable disciplinarian, ‘a tower of moral rectitude,’ totally the opposite of his predecessor, the more liberal Frank Hill. There is no way of knowing who ‘the four’ were, or what happened to them. His passion for the game was such that he described it as ‘one of the biggest things that happened in Creation.’ Virtues such as integrity and hard work were compulsory in his world where there were no shades of grey, only black and white. Rules were sacrosanct. Bribes to young players were abhorrent. The sale of cup tickets was banned in contrast to previous manager Frank Hill who once bought himself a fine pair of shoes courtesy of tickets he himself had sold.

     No manager was regarded as being straighter or harder and the legacy he left at Burnley was most of the team that flourished under Harry Potts and then went on to win the title. His toughness however did not prevent him from being one of the most innovative and inventive coaches of the time. He was fascinated by coaching and strategy and devised free-kick routines and short corners which all came to be copied elsewhere. It was claimed that Northern Ireland invented the short corner routine in the 1958 World Cup, but if they did, they did so courtesy of Jimmy McIlroy who had trained under Alan Brown. For any non-thinking footballer who enjoyed a drink, Brown must have been a nightmare, on top of which he was in a track suit more than a lounge suit, continually on top of the players on the training pitch. For Jimmy Adamson he became a role model and a great teacher of the game. Brown’s lessons stayed with him and formed the basis of his own coaching skills.

     He arrived as manager in August 1954 and stayed until July 1957. Established players like Jimmy McIlroy and Jimmy Adamson hung on his every word and realised his value. As well as nurturing young talents such as John Angus, Brian Miller, Ray Pointer, Jimmy Robson and John Connelly, he was the instigator of the Gawthorpe training area which was unique at the time. If it was Bob Lord who oversaw the purchase, it was Brown’s vision and hard work that turned it into reality. He led the gang of labourers himself digging the ditches and laying the bricks. One or two of the players, Jimmy McIlroy among them, were in fact skilled brickies. Several of them spent a summer literally digging it out of the ground.

     ‘The players got down to it, famous ones like McIlroy and Adamson, and dug ditches with me,’ he said.

     A central feature of his approach was that no-one should be treated differently. First-teamers would act as ball boys for the youths; his senior players were told to brew the tea for everybody else after training, a habit Brian Clough later copied when he adopted very much a ‘Brown persona’ in his managerial style. Clough spoke about his time at Sunderland and an early meeting with Brown:

     ‘Browny was there with his shorts on; he had the body of a 20-year old, muscles all over. If he got into you after a match, short and sweet, you never answered back. He was a stickler for discipline, a right bugger. That was the side I got from him. He detested shabby clothing and he insisted all his players had a regular trim. I don’t scare easily and never did. But I remember times when I was frightened of Alan Brown. A bollocking from him was like ten from anybody else. Alan Brown was not simply my manager – he was my mentor. I can remember looking at him at Sunderland and thinking this is the way I’ll do the job if the opportunity ever comes.’ Jimmy Adamson might have said much the same.

     ‘You lived in fear of him but there was no need, because he was a really genuine nice guy,’ said another player of him in later years.

     That ‘fear’ was well illustrated by John Connelly’s recollections of when he signed for Brown. A blank contract appeared and Brown instructed him, ‘Just put your name on that and we’ll do the rest’. It would be filled in later. Connelly did as he was told.

     After pictures had been taken by the photographer Brown said, ‘Now get your clothes on and come with me. Off they went down to the railway station and on arrival Brown disappeared into the left luggage office and emerged with a battered old suitcase. It was the shabbiest Connelly had ever seen he said years later. Then he handed him the grubbiest possible raincoat. ‘Put that on,’ he was told. Connelly obeyed. The photographer was there again to take pictures of him in the raincoat with the ancient suitcase standing by a steam train.

     Connelly thought that the caption was, ‘John Connelly arrives to sign for Burnley.’

     ‘And my mother was mad as hell when she saw it because she thought I looked like a refugee.’

     Margaret Potts recalled that when she married Harry it was Alan Brown and Bob Lord who took them to the station; but it was Alan Brown who found them a compartment of their own by ‘persuading’ the solitary occupant who was already there to leave, so they could have it to themselves. She remembered that the occupant looked at the impressive Brown and didn’t argue.

     He got just as much satisfaction from seeing players he had taught, themselves going on into coaching. He wanted to instil a desire in them to do that. Jimmy Adamson was one of his success stories.

     In his first season the club finished in mid-table, in his two remaining seasons they finished seventh each time. He left quite simply because he and Bob Lord, who by 1957 was well in control, were two such strong-willed characters, that the longer they were in the same building, the less they could get on with each other. The frequency of the differences of opinions they had, or the number of occasions that Brown did or organised something that irritated Lord, increased. Lord later said they had not spoken for 12 months and that ‘Brown had got too big-headed for his own good.’ That was in fact rubbish, Brown simply had a mind of his own, something you were not allowed to possess if you worked for Bob Lord. Brown decided to leave and Jimmy McIlroy still remembers his cryptic remark to him on leaving.

     ‘One day you’ll understand why I had to leave.’

     Alan Brown was one of a legion of people affected by Bob Lord in one way or another. The very name Bob Lord even after all these years invokes so many opinions and memories in Burnley and at Burnley Football Club. He was the classic ‘muck and brass’ arrogant patriarch running his extensive butcher’s business. Born in 1908, the son of a barber, he was the archetypal, self-made businessman who was blunt, rude, dismissive, domineering and opiniated, but determined that his beloved Burnley would be the best club in the land, and his players the best looked-after. It is significant that player after player will praise him and say how well he treated them. Jimmy Adamson might have said the same but for the events of 1976.

     Now living in Tasmania where I met him whilst on holiday, Burnley fan Terry Ridout once worked for Bob Lord in his butcher’s business. When we were all seated at dinner in Terry’s rural bungalow, up in the north of the island with the sound of cockatoos screeching away outside in the trees, he almost casually announced, ‘I used to work for Bob Lord.’ There I was 12,000 miles away from home on the other side of the world and nearly fell off the chair in surprise at the surreal unexpectedness of it. He remembers that in ‘’the model meat factory’ as Lord liked to call his premises, Lord frequently worked from a glass-fronted office from which he could survey all that went on, keeping a close eye on his staff and what they were doing. Out he would come to berate someone who wasn’t doing the job right.

     ‘He didn’t so much speak to you but bark at you,’ said Terry.   ‘Terry do this, do that, there’s too much meat left on them bones, he’d tell me and anyone else not doing the job to his liking. He smoked Passing Cloud cigarettes and pride of place on one wall of the office went to a portrait of Winston Churchill.’

     Ridout recalled that Lord spent much of his time on the telephone, frequently looking agitated, balling out ‘OW MUCH,’ with his face getting redder and redder, as he argued about the costs of his meat contracts. ‘Monday was pig-day; they came from a farm in Norfolk. Another day would be lamb from New Zealand or beef from Argentina. Another day he’d be sacking someone.’

     No matter what criticisms were levelled at Bob Lord by the time he passed away in 1981 leaving the club in administrative and financial turmoil, no-one can take away the fact that he was besotted with the club, and years earlier he had built it into a force to be reckoned with. It was as a young lad that he stood in the crowd to welcome home the Cup-winners in 1914. He was only six years old but it fired his imagination as he saw Tommy Boyle lift the trophy for the crowds to see in an era when The FA Cup Final and the eventual victory was something to bring such huge pride and sense of achievement to the town of Burnley. Later at the end of 1920/21 another inspirational moment for him came when the club were champions. Two years before that he had managed to get into Turf Moor to see a game. Bob Kelly was his favourite player as Lord saved his money and eventually bought a season ticket. He was heartbroken when Kelly left Burnley and Lord wrote that because of that he understood how people felt when years later Jimmy McIlroy left Burnley.

     Over the years he worked and worked, his butcher’s business grew so that eventually he owned a chain of 14 shops as well as building up the number of contracts for his factory to supply meat to hotels and schools. His success, the result of ruthlessness as much as business acumen inspired Jimmy Adamson to say that it had never changed him. Danny Blanchflower replied, ‘Yes he was always insufferable.’

     If there was no end of people who found him ‘insufferable’ then perhaps the classic examples were the Cobbold brothers who presided over Ipswich Town when they won the Division One title in 1962, pipping Burnley at the post. At the grand celebratory dinner at the Savoy Hotel, London, Lord had upset them all by making derogatory remarks about the achievement suggesting they had only won it because Burnley had let them. They made fun of Lord at every opportunity deriding his pronouncements such as, ‘I believe in calling a spade a bloody spade.’ They thought the fancy seats in the directors’ area of Turf Moor were the height of pomposity joking that they looked like they were covered with elephant skin. John Cobbold refused to sit in them. They regarded him as humourless and unsociable and on the occasion they were ignored and not offered a drink in the Burnley boardroom they simply helped themselves which infuriated Lord even more.

     Lord’s football obsession never abated. Somehow he made himself known to manager Cliff Britton in the 40s, visiting the dressing-room and befriending the players particularly Harry Potts. It was reported that when there was a rift between Harry Potts and the club in the late 40s it was Lord who acted as peacemaker. It was a friendship that continued after Harry left the club and moved to Everton. By 1948 he’d bought his first three shares in the club. He joined the Board in 1951 and joked that they let him on by accident while the team was in Turkey. Once Jimmy Adamson had achieved his regular first-team place, he became better known to Bob Lord and they too became early friends. Adamson was a ‘footballer’ in the proper sense of the word, and Lord was knowledgeable enough about football to recognise a good player with skill, when he saw one.

     In 1951 he had acquired a seat on the board but other directors viewed him with trepidation and disdain. A working-class director – what was that? The gulf and social distinction between players and directors had always been vast but at Burnley Lord bridged it, and in 1955 steamrollered his way to becoming chairman, having in the meantime seen to the purchase of Gawthorpe. By the time the club had won the title in May 1960 his influence and control was total so that his remaining ambition became membership of the Football League Management Committee. This he achieved in 1967 but his rudeness reached the point where the committee had to censure him: ‘It was decided unanimously that the committee would not tolerate the irresponsible comments of Mr Lord.’

   This was ironic for neither would Lord tolerate what he deemed irresponsible reports or comments in the Press about Burnley. Eventually he banned three daily newspapers and six individual reporters from Turf Moor. To be banned became almost a badge of honour amongst Press circles.

     The Presidency of the Football League eluded him, always losing out to Lord Westwood, until in March 1981 he became the acting-President for just a short three-month spell; but illness forced him to relinquish the position. He died in December 1981.

     In 1962 Kenneth Wolstenholme described him as recognisable as any soccer star or pop singer, one of the few real characters in football and a Lancashire man through and through. To his enemies he was just a loud tub-thumper, but to his friends a brilliant chairman and a fair man. ‘I’m the Chairman of Burnley Football Club, the best club in‘t world, working the sort of day that would make younger men wince,’ he boasted.  

     Arthur Hopcraft described him as ‘the Khrushchev of Burnley,’ which was not the most complimentary of tributes. He described himself as just someone who expected something back for his money and that anyone who wanted him out of the chair at Burnley would have a fight on their hands.

     Steve Kindon described him as the greatest of all the greats at the club. One of his abiding memories was Lord standing in the players’ tunnel after a Youth Cup game when Kindon was just 16. ‘Well done Stephen,’ the chairman said to him. Kindon still remembers those three little words today. If as a player you were summoned to see him you automatically worried you had done something wrong but when he summoned the young Frank Casper who had just played his fifth game for the club it was only to tell him that he’d had sleepless nights having spent £30,000 on him, but now felt it was money well spent.

     For his players he wanted nothing but the best, whether it was hotels, travel and transport, or the treats he provided like the Christmas Turkey for each player; or on tours abroad remembers Paul Fletcher, some spending money under their pillow. Fletcher still thinks that the bigger the turkey the more he liked you. Those who received the smallest turkeys feared they were the next to be sold. Dinners and end of season club trips to exotic places and the Mediterranean, or on the QE2, were the norm. Fletcher laughingly remembers that good as the hotels were, Lord always stayed in a better one nearby. He supported the abolition of the maximum wage though he opposed the changes to the retain-and-transfer system. Very few players of his era at the club ever say a bad word about him although some felt his discipline and a reprimand if they stepped out of line or misbehaved – including on the pitch.

     He kept Burnley Football Club in the top flight by selling players to pay the wages and the First Division place was safeguarded far longer than any of the other ‘smaller’ East Lancashire clubs. In the mid-60s when he realised that Jimmy Adamson was being courted by other clubs he made him first-team coach under Harry Potts. Exactly when he formed his plan to make him manager one day will never be known; possibly it was as early as 1962 when Adamson turned down the England job. But what is certain is that Lord was astute enough to realise that Adamson with his ‘modern’ approach was the man needed to take over one day.

          Above all else Lord was a visionary and predicted the things that would happen in football on a regular basis. The most telling was perhaps:

     ‘Burnley has no future as a club with status or influence. Ipswich and many other teams will be also-rans within the next five to ten years. Their main functions will be to groom players and sell to bigger and more powerful clubs. Just like Burnley have been doing for years. You won’t recognise the Football League. An economic blast will blow through the League and many of our clubs, lots of them with proud traditions, will be driven on the road to ruin. Our big city clubs will band together and outstrip the rest of us so the rest of us will be on the outside looking in. We’ll have to content ourselves discovering kids and then flogging them, just to stay alive. The day may dawn when we get back in the First Division but the future remains bleak for clubs such as ourselves.’ These were astonishingly prophetic words.

     ‘Discovering kids and flogging them,’ became the norm at Burnley and in the 70s led to Adamson making his remark to Paul Fletcher, ‘I want to build a team, but the chairman wants to build a stadium.’ Lord in fact, might have argued with that. The old Brunshaw Road Stand was in a poor state and needed replacing on safety grounds alone. His daughter Barbara Lord once told me that Lord had sleepless nights about it with its twisted girders and ageing facilities. The structural report that was commissioned, that he kept to himself so that few people knew about it, condemned it as unsafe. It is reasonable to think that had it become public knowledge at the time there would have been an outcry. He would certainly have argued that players were sold, first and foremost, to pay the generous wages. That might well have been the reason why winger Brian Pilkington was sold in 1960 even though he was at the top of his form and had even scored the winning goal at Maine Road that sealed the title win. To this day Pilkington wonders what would have happened if he had dug his heels in and refused to move.

     Every pre-season Lord visited the Gawthorpe training ground to welcome the players back. In an old Burnley Express there’s a wonderful picture of him and players. The players are lined up facing him as if they are behind an invisible white line and have been instructed to cross that line at their peril. There he stands, hands clasped behind his back, be-suited and with his trademark Pork Pie hat, addressing the troops looking rather like Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army, except he is dressed in civvies. You can well imagine the instruction. ‘Do not interrupt the chairman, do not answer back, speak only if you are spoken to; doff your caps when he has finished.’

     Peter Higgs the Burnley Express sportswriter for several years from 1972 onwards was well aware of just how difficult a person Bob Lord could be and tells the story about the week he arrived at Burnley to start his new job just as Harry Potts resigned. This was a massive story.

     ‘The club issued a terse statement on his resignation which did not do justice to his service to the club. So, as a result, I did what any journalist would do in the circumstances and contacted, or attempted to contact the club, for elaboration and tributes. After the article appeared, I received a telephone call telling me I was to report to Bob Lord’s meat factory in Lowerhouse on the Wednesday morning. I duly turned up, was ushered into Lord’s office and was told by the ‘great man’ that in future when the club issued a statement I was to take it at face value and not start delving into matters that did not concern me. The message was that I was new to the area and this is the way we do things in Burnley. In other words you report what we tell you to report. It was an extraordinary dressing down and over the coming years I did my best to ignore it. Lord was uncouth and rude and was, remarkably, allowed to get away with it.

     ‘I went to a dinner once at a posh place in the Simonstone area of Burnley where my wife was appalled by his behaviour. When the waiters brought the food, Lord had to be served first and promptly began eating straightaway, while everyone else waited to be served. Nobody complained because he was Bob Lord, and he could do what he wanted.’

     You crossed or angered Bob Lord at your peril. Derek Gill remembers the letter that was written to Lord deeply critical after Adamson was sacked in 1976. Not only that, but the letter accused him of being a pie-maker. Lord must have gone apoplectic and his lengthy reply was acerbic and threatening, with comments such as:

     ‘How blind and inexperienced you are… how poisonous is your mind regarding myself… I warn you that if any statements reach my ears which can be classed as being made by you and are of a defamatory nature I shall not hesitate to take steps to prevent you uttering irresponsible and untrue statements. I hope you take note of this warning; remember I have two letters from you which are damaging to myself.’

   And more amusingly:

     ‘Regarding your remark about meat pies, I take this opportunity of indicating to you that never in my life have I made or sold a meat pie.’

     Stuart Hall summed him up:

     ‘Turf Moor was his personal temple. Gruff, uncultured, maybe uncouth, his manner was a cross of Rottweiler with Margaret Thatcher, a total despot, a ruthless manipulator, yet a benefactor. He typified the local dignitary who rules the town. Built like a Pampas Bull, deaf as a post – unless you uttered something derogatory. Then you were banned. Yet he, and his like, built football teams par excellence…’

     His daughter Margaret sat with him every night as his life faded away. They talked into the night of past glories, people, places and the good times. They remembered banquets and celebrations, people they had met and laughed with and all the happier days. They talked too of the hurt he felt, betrayed by people who stabbed him in the back, particularly the Press who had once hung on his every word and now portrayed him as insufferable. Margaret always maintained that there was a softer, gentler side to him that few people saw and that he could be just as hurt as the next person, but that he thought it was a weakness to show it.

     John Connelly certainly remembered the good side to him and recalled that he did more for people than he ever let on. John had arranged to hire a car for his honeymoon but the car hire firm later said it was unavailable. Harry Potts was away on holiday so Connelly went to see Lord at his meat factory. If you set Lord a challenge he would usually respond helpfully so Connelly told him he was the only man who could help him at such short notice, that he needed a car and could Lord help. Lord told him to report back the day before the wedding. Connelly duly did and to his astonishment there waiting for him was a huge Wolseley for him to use.

     Jimmy McIlroy too explained that it was no good making demands on Bob Lord. Provincial star players found it difficult to generate extra football-related income, but one way was by writing columns for newspapers. McIlroy discussed the situation with Lord suggesting to him that it was impossible for players such as him to get a column. Lord took up the challenge and within days he had a column in a Sunday newspaper.

     The poignant interview that Bob Lord did with Radio Lancashire at the end of his life remains plaintive and difficult to listen to. It comes across as almost a deathbed confession as he answers questions about his life, his achievements, and the final years of decline and unpaid Turf Moor bills. The report on the state of the club that was undertaken by new director Derek Gill after Lord died was a damning indictment of a shambolic Turf Moor.

     On the radio tape the voice is strained and sometimes faltering as he searches for answers. Towards the end he explained that the demise of the ‘Team of the Seventies’ was purely due to economics. No one person was to blame. The sale of players was to do with paying wages, not building new stands; the latter of which he was accused and it always hurt him.

     ‘And how would you like to be remembered?’ he was asked finally.

     ‘To have been a man that can take stick,’ was the gist of his reply. ‘And as a man who when he set out his stall to do something, did it to the best of his ability.’ Yes he could take criticism, as long as those who accused him of being responsible for the club’s decline would also be prepared to acknowledge it was he who had made it special in the first place.

   Lord’s influence and spirit lived on within the walls of Turf Moor even after his death in the most unusual way. Brian Miller used to tell the story that he truly thought the place was haunted. On several occasions during his time as manager, to his consternation he heard Bob Lord’s voice drifting down the corridors. Eventually he discovered it wasn’t anything spectral. He voiced his fears one day to the secretary Albert Maddox. Albert looked a tad embarrassed and explained that no, the place wasn’t haunted; it was only him listening to tape recordings of old Bob.

     All in all, Bob Lord was a very difficult man to work for and work with. Alan Brown eventually found it impossible. For 12 months they hadn’t spoken. Harry Potts however, seemed to absorb the stresses of working with him like a sponge. Jimmy Adamson too coped and largely accepted Lord for what he was, until eventually it became too much for him. Was it the stress of working for him that led Jimmy to begin drinking more than was good for him?  

     Of all the stories surrounding Bob Lord, the people he upset, the accusation that Manchester United were a bunch of Teddy Boys (that he denied); the choice of words in referring to ‘the Jews that run television,’ his banning of reporters, the taking out of his hearing aid if he didn’t want to listen to criticism, his alleged involvement in the demise of Accrington Stanley – there is one story that makes me smile. Jack Cochrane was a man who came to know Lord through their involvement at Lowerhouse Cricket Club and after Lord’s death and funeral, used to visit Lord’s grave. A friend asked him if he went there to pay his respects. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I just want to see if he is still there.’

     Lord and Harry Potts, with supreme irony, are buried near each in the same churchyard. It’s reasonable to think that the good-natured and affable Harry Potts would never have given one minute’s thought, as the 60s went by, to the notion that Jimmy Adamson actually wanted his job or ever felt like standing up to the domineering Bob Lord. It was always Margaret Potts’ biggest contention that Harry just never suspected it, never saw it coming, or knew how to deal with it. Harry and Bob Lord were close friends in the late 40s when Harry was a player. If Harry wanted advice it was to Bob he turned. Lord helped him furnish his first house. Nearly eight years later he was the obvious man (to Bob Lord) for the Burnley managerial post when Billy Dougal had to relinquish the post on health grounds. Harry was manager of Shrewsbury when Lord contacted him and when he arrived he found a team that was established, was consistent if not brilliant, and there were young players coming through to join the regulars like Jimmy Adamson. Adamson’s regular position at this time was centre-half. The later re-shuffle came in the title season when Bobby Seith dropped out, Tommy Cummings came back into the middle, and Adamson moved to wing-half where he stayed until retirement as a player in 1964.

     As skipper of the side manager Potts relied and leaned on him. In training Adamson was already providing ideas. Potts was never the greatest coach or tactician; his skills were to do with man-management; the fatherly arm-round-the-shoulder kind of bloke who could smooth the ruffled feathers and calm the angry waters. He was also incredibly loyal to his players leaping up at any perceived injustice or bad decision. But although Potts certainly had his FA coaching qualifications he was not a ‘football thinker’ of the new ‘breed’ whereas Adamson saw changes in the game taking place and new approaches. What developed over time was the classic ‘new man’ versus the ‘old’ situation. Not that there were overt confrontations or arguments; it was simply a slow steady realisation on Adamson’s part that as the 60s passed by, that something different was needed other than week after week simply sticking with the same 11 players with the same simple instruction; basically play with a chuckle in your boots and pass to a Claret shirt. Bob Lord too must have realised this and you do wonder when and how the dialogue between Lord and Adamson began with regard to Adamson becoming coach, effectively assistant manager, and the beginning of the grooming process in readiness for him taking over fully. More than once in the Press he was referred to as Potts’ protégé. Lord was no football fool; he knew that one day he had to change things and he also had to make sure he tied Adamson to Burnley especially when other clubs like Sunderland were showing interest in him. But what is clear, from talking to Margaret Potts, is that if there was a quiet agreement between Lord and Adamson that one day the job would be his, Harry Potts knew absolutely nothing about it until Lord informed him in 1970 of the changes to be made, and that this in fact was a measure of Harry’s naivety and innocent vulnerability. His wife Margaret maintained in her book that she received warnings about what was going on, but that Harry simply brushed them aside.

     Peter Higgs had the impression that Adamson disliked Harry Potts, whom he eventually regarded as a bit of a bumbling fool, because he had been given too much credit for Burnley’s past successes. Higgs over the years has not been alone in that view. But Higgs was one of a legion of people who thought that Potts, in turn, was a genuinely good man who never had a bad word to say about anybody.

     ‘But,’ thought Higgs, ‘as far as the Press were concerned, Potts was not averse to avoiding the truth so that he would not have to face up to it.’ That is not to suggest for one minute that Potts was untruthful; he was as honest as the day was long. But avoiding the truth was perhaps his way of dealing with things that he couldn’t cope with, or did not want to cope with; one of them being Margaret’s suspicions that Lord and Adamson were planning to replace him as manager.

     Does wanting Harry Potts’ job make Jimmy Adamson duplicitous? Probably not: Harry’s football era was over and Jimmy had seen a much wider football world developing through the decade. The younger man with ideas and visions wanted to make better use of them; on top of that no doubt it seemed a reasonable supposition by Adamson that he and Bob Lord would form a great partnership. Alas, it would only have a six year lifespan, and Harry would tolerate just two years of his new 1970 position as a sort of managing director. The notion of the three of them being the inseparables was ended in 1970 when Adamson as good as stopped speaking to Potts. When Harry left in 1972 it was an event that in earlier years no-one would have thought possible and just four years after that, Adamson too would be discarded to the amazement of everyone.