For April 6th I'm going back 36 years to 1985 and York City's League Division 3 visit to Turf Moor, Burnley.
It seems strange to today to think that York met Burnley in the Football League. The two clubs couldn't really be much further apart in the English League pyramid than they are today with Burnley being an established Premier League club and York soon to commence their fifth consecutive season in National League North, the sixth tier of English football. One can only hope that whatever goes around comes around!
Burnley FC is an overachieving club which habitually punches above it's weight. They were one of the Founder members of the Football League in 1888 and are one of only five clubs that have been Champions of the top four English professional divisions (the others being Portsmouth, Preston North End, Sheffield United and Wolverhampton Wanderers). Recently, the local paper, the Burnley Express calculated that if all English professional clubs were ranked in order of their all-time average attendance, Burnley would come only 14th in the second tier!
The town of Burnley is in Lancashire but only just. West Yorkshire is less than 12 miles away. It has a population of under 100,000 making it roughly half the size of York. Burnley's house prices are amongst the cheapest in the UK. Turf Moor has been in continuous use by the football club since 1883 and the town's cricket team play right next door. Amusingly, in 2018 the Princess Royal pub located near to the ground was renamed "The Royal Dyche" in homage to manager Sean Dyche who achieved European football for the club that season. He joked that it should have been called "The Handsome Ginger Fella" but we all know that that's an oxymoron.
This game finished 1-1 with Michael Phelan scoring for the Clarets and Keith Houchen getting York's goal. In addition to going on to play over 100 games for Manchester United, Phelan was also Sir Alex Ferguson's right hand man for a period. Phelan's team mates that day included former Leeds United player Kevin Hird alongside ex Manchester City and Coventry City player Tommy Hutchinson. The attendance that day was 3.607
1984/85 was one of York's most successful seasons in the last 40 years and they finished 8th in Division 3 under Denis Smith. For Burnley however it was a disaster and they ended the season relegated to the Fourth Division for the first time in their history. Worse was to come when, in 1987, only a win on the last day of the season against Orient saved the club from dropping out of the Football League altogether. The club's trajectory has been upwards more or less ever since.
CRB Match No. 367
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