Stan’s Burnley throw one in again
It’s a few years ago now when Burnley kept conceding a lot of goals with games ending with ridiculous scorelines such as 6-5 at Grimsby, 7-4 at home against Watford and 7-2 against Sheffield Wednesday in the final home game of the season. All of those, and others, were defeats.
Stan Ternent would say that we throw one in now and again and yesterday, back in the Burnley dug out, his team only went and did it again, conceding ten goals in a shortened game while scoring seven ourselves.
Looking back at those games in the 2002/03 season, Gareth Taylor helped himself to a hat trick in the Watford defeat. He repeated that in this game, actually giving us the lead too before our opponents Swansea came storming back to beat us 10-7 at Bamber Bridge.
For once, the result really didn’t matter at all. We were all there to support Lenny Johnrose who revealed in August that he’s suffering with motor neurone disease, and, my word, didn’t his former team mates come out to support him.
For once it didn’t matter that Steve Davis and Mitchell Thomas didn’t quite look as defensively sound as they once were. Robbie Blake had all his magic, sadly it just took him a little longer to perform his tricks and Glen Little flattered to deceive down the right hand side, apparently picking up an injury although he did suggest we’d started well for the first three minutes of the game.
Ronnie Jepson looks big. I think, given that he works for Neil Warnock at Cardiff, he kept out of Stan’s way, but whoever wore the number 8 shirt for Swansea was the biggest of the lot by some distance.
Paul Cook and Micky Mellon provided the comedy moments. Mark Halsey needs to get back refereeing in the Premier League; he gave us three penalties, Cooky took the first but failed to score; Halsey helped out by suggesting the goalkeeper had moved. As he prepared to re-take it, Mellon stormed in on a long run to hit the ball into the net.
In the second half, Cook tried to find Mellon with a pass. Now, as everyone knows, I was a big Paul Cook fan and his left foot was like a magic wand. It wasn’t this time, the pass went nowhere near Mellon. Cooky just laughed, waved to the crowd, and walked off. We didn’t see him again.
For the record, our goals were scored by Taylor(3 1pen), Mellon(pen), John Mullin, Blake(pen) and Andy Cooke, and there’s by Andy Robinson(5), Lee Trundle(3), Butler(2).
It was a brilliant afternoon. The only difficult part was watching Lenny struggle to walk out on to the pitch where he was greeted by both teams and pupils from Lowerhouse Junior School where he is a teacher.
A massive well done to all the players from both clubs who turned out to help raise funds for Motor Neurone Disease and also to Stan and Brian Flynn who managed the two teams, although I’ll be having words with Flynny next time I see him for his team beating Burnley.
And don’t forget Mark Halsey. The way he was pointing to the spot, we could do with him back in the Premier League.
Lenny didn’t play in any of the throw one in games but he did kick off yesterday so we can now say he’s been involved with one.
If you would like to make a donation to the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Burnley supporter Simon Beecroft, whose dad Alan is also suffering with the illness, is skydiving with Lenny in just under three weeks time. You can SPONSOR him.
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