Burnley FC " Degrees of Separation " ....

[Clarets4me]

File this firmly under, " Too much time on his hands ", but here goes .....

I set out to work out how many Burnley players it would take to get us back from the current Premier League squad, back to 8th September 1888, Burnley's very first game in the Football League. For example, Jay Rodriguez played League Football with Michael Duff, who in turn paired up with Graham Branch, who played with Steve Davis ( Mk 2 ) and so on, back to 1888 ....

Jay Rodriguez
Michael Duff
Graham Branch
Steve Davis ( Mk2 )
Joe Jakub
Jim Thomson
Andy Lochead
Tommy Cummings
Arthur Woodruff
Edward Hancock
George Waterfield
Jerry Dawson
Fred Barron
Walter Place Jnr.
James Yates

So 15 players in all, it was over 21 years between Jerry Dawson's debut in Sept.1907, until his last game on Christmas Day 1928 ! Both he and Arthur Woodruff played either side of a World War, whilst the near 17 years that passed between Joe Jakub's first and last Burnley appearances also helped !

Some legends at work here !

[Funkydrummer]

Blimey, where did you pull that one from ?

Good one though.

[wilks_bfc]

Could you have “reduced” the list if using Leighton James instead of Jackub?

[Clarets4me]

Could you have “reduced” the list if using Leighton James instead of Jackub?

I had meant to post " If you can do it in less players, then I'm all ears ! "
As far as I can see, Leighton James didn't play with Steve Davis ( Mk II ), which was my thinking ....

[Ric_C]

I guess you could also have had Phil Bardsley instead of Jay Rod?

[Clarets4me]

I guess you could also have had Phil Bardsley instead of Jay Rod?

Thanks " Ric C " .... I hadn't remembered that Phil Bardsley had been at Burnley on loan in the 2005-06 season, and played alongside Graham Branch.
I can now remove Jay Rodriguez & Michael Duff, and replace with Phil Bardsley, taking the number down to 14 players, not 15 !!

[keith1879]

I'm very impressed.....it sounds like nit-picking but the fact that J-Rod, Joe Jakub and Steve Davis all had spells away bothers me .....it kind of breaks the continuity. You could replace J-Rod with Ben Mee in your original list to get back to Michael Duff but I'll have to think about the other two.