Ternent intent on bringing good times back to Burnley

FA Cup sixth round Manager who has improved fortunes of once-proud Lancashire club eager to reward fans with semi-final appearance

Tim Rich
Saturday 08 March 2003 01:00 GMT
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"Anyone got a fag," said Stan Ternent, his face streaming with the rain that was howling off the Pennines across Burnley's training ground. "I can't believe it. I'm surrounded by a pack of journalists and nobody's got a bloody cigarette."

Burnley's manager is no Arsène Wenger and Gawthorpe Hall, the club's training headquarters with its narrow, concrete corridors is hardly London Colney, although when Ternent first arrived there as a schoolboy in the summer of 1962, it delivered the most technically advanced coaching in Europe. Youths, reserves and the first-team all trained to the same system while players were encouraged to swap positions. It was total football 10 years before Ajax coined the phrase. That was very long ago.

The side Ternent inherited in the summer of 1998 was very different to the one he had joined. "A motley crew of ageing pros, stage-struck kids and inadequates who would struggle to get a game for Holby City," was his assessment of a squad which had avoided relegation to the Third Division by two points.

It is a tribute to Ternent that tomorrow's FA Cup quarter-final at Watford may not be Burnley's biggest game under his charge. Last season they led the First Division at Christmas and, as Mark Lawrenson remarked, only one side since the war had failed to win promotion from that position. Burnley became the second and did not even make the play-offs, when a last-minute free-kick from Paul Gascoigne, his farewell act in English football, whistled wide.

In 40 years in the game, Ternent has never been further than this in the Cup. His father, a Sunderland fan, watched him score the goal for Carlisle that eliminated the then Cup holders at Roker Park. He refused to see Stan afterwards and his parish priest, who watched alongside him, began his sermon with the words: "One of our parishioners scored a goal yesterday that sent Sunderland to defeat. May God forgive him."

Gordon Armstrong, who left Sunderland to play for Ternent at Bury and Burnley, said: "He is a one-off, very hard, very straight. He dragged the club up. When I arrived, it was in the doldrums; the team was poor and full of young lads. He is a similar type to Peter Reid. They are both driven personalities, very strong-minded."

Ternent needed to be. Burnley began the season by losing their opening four games and facing financial crisis. "The bonus schedules were geared to the money we were getting from ITV Digital and, unfortunately, we couldn't change them after they went bust.

"The players decided to stay on what they were on and I replied that if that were the case everyone would have to be for sale. It was a financial fact of football life. The players were looking at me and saying: 'Come on gaffer, get some players in, some good ones, and we can really go for it'. Instead, we had one point from five matches and we have been playing catch-up ever since."

Ternent believes that Burnley have an outside chance of making the play-offs, although he concedes they would have to win nine more games to break through. The televised ties with Fulham and now Watford have earned £500,000, although he expects to see none of it made available for transfers.

Burnley is a football town. A greater percentage of its citizens watch their club than anywhere else and with a chance of a first FA Cup semi-final since 1974, when they were beaten by Malcolm Macdonald's goals for Newcastle, excitement is beginning to ripple down the Colne Valley. "If Arsenal won the Premiership and the FA Cup then the runners-up would qualify for Europe," Ternent said, his thoughts perhaps running away with him. "For your players to play European football and the exposure that gives you is fantastic but... come on... we're Burnley not Barcelona."

However, when he first came to Turf Moor the comparison would not have seemed so ridiculous. "Oh no, they were the equivalent of Premiership champions; the two top teams in the country in those days were Burnley and Spurs. Expectation levels are always high at clubs like Burnley; ones with tradition. Sometimes, the champagne tastes like beer but there it is."

Despite his success, Ternent has not always had universal support. "It's like that in Burnley. They're not happy unless they're moaning. You could win 5-0 and they still wouldn't be happy. I'm not bothered. I live in Burnley. I know what they're like. They're good folk, but they'll moan about owt."

"They" may include the club's most famous supporter, Tony Blair's communications director, Alistair Campbell – interestingly Margaret Thatcher's press secretary, Bernard Ingham also followed the Clarets. "I don't know about Alistair Campbell," Ternent said. "He should be worrying about getting the stock market moving and get my pension going. We are struggling big style."

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