Preston and Burnley's FA Cup clash evokes memories of a golden age

The Guardian

28-02-2025

If the FA Cup has a golden age, the 1950s and 1960s lay considerable claim. A time of schoolboys being able to list the era's classic finals dipped in Pathé news sepia may have passed but reminiscing harks back to a time when towns rather than cities were English football's epicentres. Specifically, towns in Lancashire, Saturday's fifth-round lunchtime kick-off at Deepdale recalling times when Preston and Burnley competed for Cup glory.
North End and the Clarets may not be the fiercest Lancastrian rivalry – Blackpool and Blackburn are respective bête noires – but it remains hotly-contested. The pair met just a fortnight ago for a 0-0 Championship draw that boiled over, Burnley's midfielder Hannibal Mejbri accusing the Preston forward Milutin Osmajic of racial abuse and Osmajic 'strongly refuting' the claims. The matter remains with the Football Association.
Two founder Football League members will reconvene. Making the quarter-finals will recall an era where both regularly went deep in the competition. Each club's home is a tribute to such a mid-20th century heyday. For the Sir Tom Finney Stand at Deepdale, read the Jimmy McIlroy Stand at Turf Moor.
Preston, last in the top division in 1961, were FA Cup runners-up in 1954 and 1964, quarter-finalists twice more in that period while Burnley, Football League champions in 1960, reached the semis in 1961 and lost the 1962 final. This was a last hurrah of the provincial town club – Preston became a city only in 2002 – as the lifting of footballers' maximum wage in 1961 began a drift towards Lancashire's metropolitan areas of Liverpool and Manchester from the mill towns.
The post-war era furthered a trend of club chairmen being local businessmen made good, the town's tycoon given further civic status. Burnley's chairman was Bob Lord, notorious as one of the first men from a football boardroom to become a headline-grabber. Today's 3pm Saturday TV blackout is an enduring Lord Legacy.
'I want Burnley the best,' declared the owner of a chain of butcher's shops. 'Not second best.' Lord would achieve his goal but did so having been lacking in sympathy towards Manchester United after 1958's Munich Air Disaster. 'They'll just have to fight their way out of it,' Lord said after eight players died. 'They went into this of their own accord.' Arthur Hopcraft, emeritus chronicler of that football age, compared Lord to Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, whose 'we will bury you' issued to Western diplomats in 1956 was very much of the Lord school.
Lord had a testy relationship with McIlroy, Northern Ireland's jewel of an inside-forward, the acme of the manager Harry Potts' football, inspired by the Hungarians of the 1950s. Jack Hixon, a scout who later discovered Alan Shearer, supplied Potts with players, including the captain Jimmy Adamson, later Clarets manager, and Jimmy Robson, another inside-forward. Powerful outside-right John Connelly topped the scoring in that title-winning team.
Such was the penury of the age for footballers that Adamson and McIlroy had dug ditches as the club's training ground was built in 1955. It recalled the Preston chairman Nat Buck's treatment of Finney, the greatest English player of the time, perhaps any other age. Paid only £14 a week, Finney had been offered £10,000 to join Palermo in 1952. 'You can forget about all that,' said Buck, the former house builder exercising players' draconian lack of freedom of contract. 'If tha' doesn't play for us, tha' doesn't play for anybody.' Famously, Finney set up a plumbing business with his brother Joe for a second income.
Finney was beloved by Bill Shankly. Liverpool's patriarch never swayed from his protege being the best of all after their time as pre-war teammates. Another teammate, the future Chelsea, Scotland and Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty, tried to get the better of Buck in contract negotiations. 'I want £14 a week like Tom,' he demanded. The offer was £12, £10 in the summer. Docherty wasn't as good as Finney, countered Buck. 'The Doc' replied: 'Yes, but I am in the summer.'
The 1954 final was supposed to be the 'Finney Final', to follow Blackpool's 1953 'Matthews Final', but 'the Preston Plumber' never got to emulate his England wing partner Stanley in winning a major medal. West Brom, managed by Vic Buckingham, later an influential figure at Ajax and Barcelona, won 3-2, beating a team managed by Scot Symon, soon to lead Rangers successfully. Finney blamed himself: 'If they looked to me for help and guidance they were wasting their time … I had a stinker.'
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A decade later, second-tier Preston returned to Wembley, inspired by the goals of Alex Dawson, a former Busby Babe nicknamed 'the Black Prince of Deepdale', and featuring the left-half Howard Kendall, 17 years and 345 days, the then youngest-ever finalist. Dawson scored but West Ham, featuring their three future 1966 World Cup winners, prevailed 3-2 after a last-minute goal from Ronnie Boyce, who died this month. 'Tantalus himself might have pitied North End,' wrote the Guardian's Eric Todd. Preston had also fallen short of promotion. A quarter-final in 1966 preceded Kendall's move to Everton.
Burnley, far more familiar in the Premier League era, have not been further than the quarters since the final they lost in 1962 to Tottenham. Spurs's goalscorers in a 3-1 win were Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith and Danny Blanchflower, idols of that club's 'glory game' era. Those who rail against modern football's heavy obsession with tactics may be surprised to learn this was nicknamed 'The Chessboard Final', the deliberate approach of Potts and Tottenham's Bill Nicholson, and two great teams of the era serving up what is nowadays euphemistically described as an 'intriguing tactical battle'. Todd in turn wrote the game had been 'an anti-climax to months of eager anticipation' and 'one of the quietest finals in one's memories'.
With McIlroy allowed to leave in 1963, Connelly sold to United the following year, decline set in. Lord remained in control until two months before his December 1981 death, the club by then in the Third Division. There, they would find Preston. If times at these Lancashire clubs have been better, they have certainly been worse.