I’m sure my father was disappointed that he’d failed to light the flame because he, in fact, had been going to Turf Moor for years. Later on, when I did indeed become hooked, he’d talk of some of the great games and goals he’d seen, one of them being the Tommy Cummings goal when in January 1952, Cummings went the length of the field, beating every Newcastle player at least twice and then scored with a 20-yard screamer. What made it doubly special was the fact that Tommy was a centre-half, and back then a centre-half never entered the opposition half, let alone scored a goal.

     He used to graphically describe how every man and boy in the ground threw their caps in the air when the ball smacked the back of the net. Cloth caps and overcoats were the norm then and 33,000 caps went ten feet up into the air accompanying a cheer the like of which had never been heard before, and I’ve always imagined ever since then that a lot of people went home without their cap, or with the wrong one.

     What has certainly stuck in my mind since that day in ’55 when I first went to see a game was that we stood about halfway along the Longside and we were somewhere near the front. That was his spot, on the Longside, roundabout the halfway line and when my regular visits began at the beginning of 1959/60, we always stood in the same place and you had to pay a bit extra for the privilege of being in the enclosure, as it was called. What a season to begin a lifelong loyalty; by the end of it Burnley were champions.

   Little lads had stools to stand on, carried in for them by their obliging fathers. Long before that, small boys were handed right down to the front and were allowed to sit on the benches that lined the perimeter wall.

     After every game there was a Sunday morning ritual. Ever fearful that his son and heir wasn’t reading enough, my father would have me read to him the Burnley report from the Sunday paper, the Sunday Express it always was and it was always a substantial report because in that glorious season we always won, or so it nostalgically seems.

     Thus I learned to read quite happily, and for extra practice I perused the Saturday night Sports Pink as well. I’d race down town to buy one as soon as it turned 6 o’ clock and the lad who sold them was always underneath the railway viaduct in Todmorden near the market place. There’s probably a message there for all the educators of the world: if you want a lad to learn to read with gusto and enthusiasm, just stick the back page of a Sunday newspaper in front of him or an old Sports Pink and never mind about National Curriculum and targets and SATS. They won’t be necessary.

     1959/60: Not a bad season to start being a regular supporter was it? And of the games that season two are locked in my head, one of them being an 8-0 demolition of Nottingham Forest, and the second a 2-0 win over Tottenham. The goals from that game I have never forgotten; a bullet header from ray pointer from a cross whipped over at pace from John Connelly, and the second scored by Connelly himself when he let fly with a 20-yard rocket. In those days the din from the Longside was simply incredible, the roof of the stand acting as a lid on a soundbox, and with those old-fashioned wooden rattles that we used to have, the din was just thunderous. The pleasure of sending the Tottenham aristocrats back down to the namby-pamby south, with their tails between their legs was just wonderful. In those days the north-south divide was huge. To us northerners the south then really was a foreign land.

     The ritual afterwards if it was an evening game was always the same. There was a pub somewhere high up on the moors and for the life of me I can’t think of the name, but if you tuned right off the Bacup road and then drove along some God-forsaken winding lane until you reached this hostelry in the wilderness you could then meet up with lots of the blokes from Tod and had been at the game standing near us. You could relive the game whilst demolishing a plate of pie and peas, or two.

 ‘Course in those days, the glorious early 60s, there was always something to talk about, because we usually won and thumped goals in by the half-dozen and then there were the glorious European nights when in the fog and mist and mud we sent Johnny Foreigner back to France or Germany with their crestfallen faces after they had discovered what unfashionable Burnley was all about and players like Elder, Angus, Miller, Harris and Blacklaw were not blokes you could take liberties with.

     Funny how it was always evening games that seem the most vivid. The story goes that Bob Lord ordered the floodlights to be switched on early so that blokes on their way home from work would know there was a game on. Evening games under the lights always seemed to be misty, adding to the drama and sense of theatre. If it was a wet pitch the lights would make it sparkle and glisten unless of course it was that time of year when the mud was six inches deep and Brian O’ Neil took to it like a duck to water and slid around until he was black from head to foot. But, was it mist or the steamy breathe and cigarette smoke that drifted out from under the Longside canopy? Whatever it was, it all added up to something memorable, an atmosphere that was inimitable and a noise that was just thunderous.

     I’m lucky. I never saw The Longside forlorn and dilapidated in the sad, desperate years when crowds were down to a mere handful, the empty spaces were embarrassing, you could have a metal barrier to yourself, the football was dire and we even lost to teams like Rochdale and Hereford.

     God knows how before that Bob Lord must have felt as he looked across from his comfy seat in his stand and on the Longside opposite, saw the lack of spectators and desperately needed income. It was a time when secretary Albert Maddox received the instruction, ‘Tell them I’m not in,’ when creditors came calling for their money. Old Bob must have known the game was up; his day was done, and that the great club and history he had fashioned was crumbling and vanishing before his eyes as he clung to his chairman’s role. From games against Hamburg and Napoli to games against Shrewsbury and Newport, from riches to rags, from glory to gloom; it was a depressing time to stand beneath the roof of the once mighty Longside that even the great Bill Shankly said was awesome.

     For me it became difficult to get to Turf Moor from the mid-70s onwards after the lovely side that Adamson created faded into nothing because one by one the best players were sold. But I do remember that in the 70s the Longside was responsible for the re-awakening of old friendships when a bunch of people I knew from college days appeared behind us one day. We still meet them today 25 years later and now we’re all growing old together.

     By the mid-70s I was married of course and prior to that marriage, part of the courtship ritual included taking the bride-to-be to stand on the Longside and see the team of the late 60s, then the early 70s, always standing in the same spot, seeing the same people and hearing the Carpenters over the tannoy in that gorgeous 72/73/74 period when there was a promotion, the football was superb, and we really did believe that Adamson had created The Team of the Seventies.

     There was the game against Arsenal when the Longside destroyed Alan Ball with incessant derision and jeers to the point where he was so badly affected he could barely kick a ball in a straight line or make a 2-yard pass. Burnley won 2-1 thanks to Waldron and Hankin. The abuse hurled at him really was quite appalling, much of it from a young Mrs T who used words that she didn’t understand and has never used since. She still blushes when I mention it and you almost felt sorry for Ball that day as he was in such a dithering state and it all illustrated the power and effect of so many people crammed into one confined space yelling fury and vitriol at this cocky, arrogant little so and so.

     Funnily enough, years earlier, as a young lad stood standing with my dad, I’d hurled similar abuse at a Sheffield Wednesday player, Tony Kay, who had just upended Jimmy Mac and then as Jimmy lay on the floor Kay casually did some disrespectful keepie-uppies within a couple of feet of him. Kay had been dishing it out all game so incensed I let fly. Pater, whose character was largely Victorian, even in the early 60s, was far from pleased.

     Only on the brightest, sunniest, warmest days did we venture onto the Beehole End leaving behind the womb-like closeness of the Longside when on big game days you were squashed in like sardines in a tin. Such a squashed-in day was versus Liverpool in their pomp one year and we could only squeeze right in at the back in the corner nearest the Cricket Field Strand. Behind us was a high brick wall upon which a score of Liverpool supporters sat legs swinging and spittle raining down as Liverpool won 4-0 so easily. The next season they trounced us 5-1 on Boxing Day. Sometimes the Longside was not a happy place to be.

     It certainly wasn’t when Wimbledon came one year when they were a non-league side and won 1-0 in a cup-tie. They’d fathomed out how to deal with Leighton James and caused one of those cup upsets you prefer to forget. But a day we all remember is when Leeds United came and the Burnley Babes as they were briefly known beat them 5-1 and this was a Leeds side that would go on to win the title. How we loved the humiliation we dished out to Revie’s henchmen that day as we stood with 26,000 other folks of whom half were probably under the Longside.

     Those who stood on that Longside in the 60s and 70s were so privileged; just to stand there and see the procession of such great players that came our way. Not only did we have our own list of legends – McIlroy, Adamson, Pointer, Connelly, O’ Neil, Irvine, Lochhead, Coates, Morgan, Thomas, Dobson Stevenson, Noble, Kindon, Waldron, James, Flynn, Fletcher and all the rest (Put them all down and we’d fill the page), but there were also the visitors, St John, Greaves, Mackay, Blanchflower, Matthews, Finney, Ball, Osgood, Best, Charlton, Law, Banks, Bremner, Bell, Summerbee and countless others. There was such an endless list of great, great players and on the days that Burnley beat them, and we were just a little small-town team amongst the city giants, it was just such a marvellous feeling.

     I wasn’t there when Burnley beat Celtic 1-0 in the Anglo Scottish Cup by which time the Longside was divided in two by railings and fencing, one half being for away supporters in a decade when confrontations and violence was common between rival fans. On that shameful night when rioting by Celtic fans, the stopping of the game, the fencing used as spears, the bottles used as missiles, bloodied heads and overwhelmed policemen became national TV news. The story goes that as the players sat huddled in the dressing room waiting for the crowd to settle and order to be restored, Harry Potts suggested to Steve Kindon that he might go out onto the pitch and appeal for calm.

     ‘ER one small problem boss,’ he allegedly replied. ‘It was me that scored the f*****g goal that started it.’

     Of course the good years could never last and the demise of the club and the Longside and the gradual dwindling of its regulars, mirrored the decline of the club through the 80s, until at last things came to a head in that awful final game of ‘86/87 when the club was about to implode unless it beat Orient and saved itself. Would the club have completely folded? At the time people said yes but in truth it emerged later that there were people who were prepared to keep it afloat and alive and provide the finance to keep the club in business, had it lost that day.

     It was the day the Longside was a real and potent twelfth man as an endless volume of emotion, power, fervour and support, and indeed desperation, cascaded down from the old Stand onto the field for the whole of the game. It transformed limited players into winning ones; it infused them with a passion and a will that lifted them to new heights of effort. Our desire to win became their desire to win and it is doubtful that any crowd has ever carried and lifted a team in the way it did that day, although the Carling Cup game against Spurs in Coyle’s time came mighty close once Blake’s goal went in.

     And as if that was not memorable enough there was the coming together of two sets of supporters after the game as Orient fans shared our contagious elation and relief, exchanging scarves, handshakes, smiles and genuine love, for they knew they had witnessed not a great game, but a great sporting event. It was one of football’s happy endings and all of us had been part of it. It was one of just a handful of games I saw in the 80s and I remember that day having the feeling that I just had to be there, as if an umbilical cord was still intact. There was the feeling as we drove over, flew over from round the globe, or just walked to the ground, that this might be the end of the club. None of us knew that day exactly what would happen.

     Believe it or not my first sight of the new stands was a total surprise. Much of the 90s was still a time when I never set foot anywhere near the Turf – family reasons mainly and being tied down in Leeds. And then one day we had to make a journey home to Leeds via Burnley and decided to make a detour by the ground just for old times’ sake. We looked in amazement at the two new towering blocks. I was actually open-mouthed with surprise it was so totally unexpected. The Bee Hole End and more significantly the Longside where I had grown up were gone. We did a U-turn and drove round the back into the car park for a closer look.

     The memories though remain in scrapbooks and albums of cuttings, in books like Stuart Clarke’s Homes of Football, on video and old MOTD recordings of games long gone. But it’s in the mind where they live most vividly with an indelible permanence.

     The deep carpets, lines of well-drilled waiters and fine dining of the cosseted hospitality areas might be OK for the modern spectator and for the commercial coffers, and the outside areas might have their superb, clear views of the faraway hills and moorlands, but none of it is the same as standing shoulder to shoulder with people you didn’t know from Adam, but whom for 90 minutes were your comrades and brothers as you stood, sang, chanted and swayed in unison. Something died when all-seater stadiums became the norm. 

     It occurs to me that 2015 is a double anniversary for me for not only is it 20 years since the Longside was demolished, but it is 60 years since I first stood there. If football can be defined as a place to be, the old Longside was in reality that place, and in my mind, 60 years later, it still is.

Dave Thomas September 2015