Ten years and counting
Ten years ago today, Burnley were robbed when Mike Dean fell for the cheating Martin Olssen and gave Blackburn Rovers a penalty from which David Dunn scored the only goal of the game to give our local rivals a 1-0 win.
“It’s clear it’s not a penalty. Olsson’s took a dive, he’s conned the referee,” said Burnley boss Brian Laws. There is no doubt that Laws was absolutely right and it left us having to wait almost another four years before we could finally get a first win against them since 1979. But on this day in 2010 the clock started counting very much in our favour because they haven’t beaten us since.
Sam Allardyce was the manager at the time but new owners Venky’s came in towards the end of that year. Allardyce was replaced by Steve Kean and when global advisor Shebby Singh arrived the fun started at Ewood.
They were relegated in 2012 and that left them to face us again in league football. By then the managerial chair at Ewood was seeing new occupants on a very frequent basis; Sean Dyche had arrived at Burnley.
Both games that season ended in 1-1 draws. Sam Vokes equalised late in the day for us at the Turf but at Ewood we led for over an hour through Jason Shackell before David Dunn scored their equaliser deep into stoppage time, an equaliser that was so far offside it was hard to believe that any assistant referee with a flag and two eyes couldn’t spot it.
Emotional Ecstatic Ewood was the title I gave to the match report. “They are not hurting us any more,” I wrote in that report, adding: “I am so delighted all those of our supporters who have never had the opportunity to witness us beating Blackburn can now say they have.”
Three draws and a win, and two seasons later it got even better when we beat them twice in one season for the first time since 1978/79. We had that wonderful moment at Ewood when Scott Arfield ran the full length of the pitch. Having scored at the Blackburn End all he wanted to do was celebrate with the Burnley fans at the Darwen End.
That one ended 1-0 as did the home game. Later in the season an early Andre Gray penalty was enough to complete the double and by now playing our local rivals had become a very pleasurable experience again, bus trips apart, just as it had been in my earlier days of watching the Clarets.
We haven’t played them in league football since for the simple reason that we’ve been either one or two divisions above them. But there was the League Cup tie back in August 2017 when we went to Ewood and won 2-0 with goals from Jack Cork and Robbie Brady. It could have been a much bigger win that night, we were so much better than them and it was just brilliant to see us so dominant against them.
So, they have nothing to shout about now. We are the top dogs in East Lancashire and it is ten years and counting.
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