Blackburn (aren’t there a lot of teams beginning
with “B”? – and they’re nearly
all in Lancashire)
I always think of Blackburn’s ground in terms of glazed tiles around
the turnstiles and meat pies, rather than the three-quarters of a modern ground
that is Ewood Park’s present incarnation. I preferred the old version,
to be honest, but progress is inevitable in today’s game.
One particular trip we took to
Blackburn was in the heady days of Jimmy Adamson,
who, when he wasn’t
driving around Whitley Bay full of drink, was trying
his best to sign the entire Burnley team. Could Doug
Collins have been done under the trades description
act for putting “professional footballer” on
his CV ? I think so. This was a Christmas fixture,
back in the good old days when we used to play games
on consecutive days, and we had played Blackpool
at home on Boxing day, the day before. Two goals
from the Lord Rowell ensured a 2-1 victory. At the
time, Blackpool had a particularly foolish forward,
whose name escapes me, but who was daft enough to
cross swords with Joe Bolton.
Anyone over the age of thirty five should remember
the incident, or one similar. It went something like
this:
1. Joe kicks the forward (nothing unusual there)
2. Forward throws punch at Joe
3. A deathly silence descends Roker as the crowd anticipates the inevitable
4. Forward’s face comes into sharp contact with Joe’s forehead
5. Joe sets off for the bath without giving the ref time to get his book out.
6. Two minutes later, forward wakes up.
(It makes you wonder – did Joe look at the opposition’s teamsheet,
spot a worky-ticket winger, and turn the taps on at five to three?)
As a result of his dismissal,
Joe was not allowed to travel on the team coach
the next day, but he came down on the bus from
the Barley Mow anyway, and we spotted him on the
terraces at Ewood Park. It was when we stopped
for a pre-match pint at a big pub called the Saxon,
near Burnley, that we found out the reason for
his exclusion from the team bus. Both the Sunderland
and Blackpool teams had stopped there for dinner,
and Joe’s presence may well
have dented the entente cordiale that was evident
between the two sets of players. We soon picked out
the foolish forward – he was sporting a black
eye that stretched from his eyebrow to his top lip,
and looking a bit sorry for himself (wouldn’t
you?).
We enjoyed a bit crack with the
Sunderland players and staff, and also Bob Hatton
of Blackpool, who either mistook us for someone
else, or had a bloody good memory – we had spoken to him before or
after games on a couple of occasions, but never imagined
he would walk up to us and say “alright lads,
how are you doing?” and enter into a discussion
on the quality of the beer, as if with long-lost
friends.
There was also a bus in from Bishop,
and one of the lads began berating Mr Adamson about
the amount of money he was allegedly earning, and
telling him that he should get a round of beers in
for the whole bus. Jimmy looked very uncomfortable,
but the tension eased when he surprisingly agreed
to this quite moderate request. This only went to
prove one of three things:
1. We were paying him far too much,
2. That he was very generous, or
3. He’d heard about the Aclet Hotel, and went for the sensible option.
Whatever the reason, it lightened the mood in the bar, and gave Mr Adamson
a better reputation than he deserved in certain parts of Bishop.
The game wasn’t much to write home about, so I didn’t. It ended
1-1, with our goal coming from promising young left back Tim Gilbert – and
we all know what happened to Tim.
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