Ahead of last night's game against Stoke, being played after press time for this column, after one of two crucially important homes games on the bounce (striker Robbie Blake certainly thinks so in his media comments earlier this week), Burnley fans w
ere being asked to stretch their beliefs a bit.
Boss Brian Laws was praising the Potters, or rather the tactics of their manager Tony Pulis, with the emphasis on hard work.
I'm all for that, as long as a bit of flair is in evidence as well. It may be a case of porridge without any cream, but I reckon supporters would stomach a degree of roughage for the remainder of the campaign if it meant enough points for survival.
In the long run Clarets fans like a bit of the cavalier, however, and the boss could easily lose backing if he tries to develop a route one game.
Laws himself, Vince Overson and the pugnacious Andy Wharton were a solid enough unit back in the day, but in a team which also boasted the skills of Michael Phelan, Martin Dobson and the precocious Trevor Steven.
BURNLEY said goodbye to one of its greats this week - around the same time as getting ready to honour another.
Goalkeeper Adam Blacklaw is the second of the 1959-60 championship team to pass away - a giant of a man, big enough to step into the boots of a goalkeeper as good as Colin McDonald, whose Burnley and England career had been ended by injury.
After leaving football, Blacklaw, as footballers in his day did, slipped into ordinary employment and became a colleague to many who had watched him from the terraces.
A player who found it harder to cope with life after football was Tommy Boyle, whose unmarked grave at Hoyland, near Barnsley, will soon be honoured with a memorial jointly funded by Burnley and Barnsley Football Clubs.
Boyle captained both to FA Cup finals, the Clarets beating Liverpool in 1914, and after serving in the First World War skippered Burnley to their first league title in 1920-21, when the "New Invincibles", with the Yorkshireman a rock at the heart of defence, went 30 consecutive league games unbeaten within one season, a record unbeaten until Arsene Wenger's Arsenal finally bettered it around 80 years later.
The only Burnley captain to lift both FA Cup and First Division Championship trophies struggled with life after football, briefly coached in Germany, became a publican in Blackpool for a time and was hospitalised at Whittingham for a spell amid serious health problems. He died in 1940 at the young age of 53. Giants both, and rightly remembered.
