Ternent's blend of bullying and brains is a triumph

A conversation about the glamour of the Cup is not easily achieved at Burnley's Gawthorpe training ground. As the manager, Stan Ternent, observes: "If the health people came in, they'd close this gaff down." Outside the cubicle which serves as his office, the sign "Manager No Admittance" is taped to the wall. The red noticeboard inside carries just one message, the result of a scooter raffle, and a wire coathanger dangles from the board's frame.

The boot room being the only place capacious enough to accommodate the scrum of notebooks, cameras and film crews, this is where Ternent opts to discuss this afternoon's FA Cup quarter-final at Watford, with the apology: "Sorry about this, we are not used to this sort of stuff". Perhaps not, but it is difficult to think of anyone better qualified than this 56-year-old now into his 23rd season in management to drum up interest in Burnley, one of those towns built around its football club. The sort of steady, drenching rain you used to see in Humphrey Bogart films has plastered Ternent's hair to his scalp, but he is rapidly reunited with something warm in a plastic beaker and a cigarette, inevitably cadged. "I can bum fags for England," Ternent brags, adding that it has been 22 years since he purchased a packet.

In a managerial career littered, he claims, "with poxy chairmen, useless players and ridiculous expectation levels", Ternent has ascended another peak, his best-ever run in the Cup. The game at Watford will be Burnley's 10th this season in the knock-out competitions, FA and Worthington, and his side are in rare form, one defeat in 14 matches.

"Certainly we have earned the right to be where we are," he insists, and indisputably cup success has boosted the bank balance. "I don't know how much the club have made, it's not my side of the fence, but it's welcome income," he smiles.

What is equally welcome for this much-travelled man is a clean bill of health for his small squad, the first time this has happened, he says, in the five years he has been Burnley's manager, a spell in which he has operated like a circus ringmaster, bringing in people such as Ian Wright and Paul Gascoigne at the end of their careers to whet appetites. He is still at it, too, having made a recent enquiry of fierce rivals Blackburn Rovers if Matt Jansen might be available.

On loan, of course. Money is tight at every First Division club since digital TV crashed, taking income with it. It was this, Ternent, claims, which accounts for a wretched start to the season. "We were geared to players' bonus schemes, and they decided they wanted to stay on. I said, that being the case, everyone would have to be for sale. Maybe that had an adverse effect, with us getting one point out of the first five matches, and we have been trying to catch up since."

Had that, then, been his low point at Burnley? Ternent scoffed. "No, the low point was when I first came here, couldn't get any lower than that." Taking over in May 1998 from Chris Waddle in a career which had started as a player at Turf Moor, gone on to Carlisle, Sunderland, Blackpool and Leeds, and taken in coaching and managerial roles at Bradford City, Crystal Palace, Hull City, Chelsea and Bury, Ternent described what he found as "a knacker's yard". So well has he moved the club forward since then that Burnley were promoted from Second to First Division and in successive years have missed the play-offs by one place. He has done it in a manner which marks him out as a member of the old-style managerial society; by cajoling and cunning, bullying and brains. With a dash of patented Ternent, which has seen his wife, Kath, sprinkle holy water from Lourdes on a pitch he was convinced contained some points-sapping evil spirit, and a superstition which has him donning the same pair of socks, pinched from one of his sons, on match days because they have the word "lucky" stitched around the ankles.

And don't think Sir Alex Ferguson's flying boot was a dressing-room first. As he recounts in his newly published, and highly entertaining, autobiography,Stan the Man, Ternent took a vicious kick at a litter bin after Burnley had lost at Gillingham and on the journey home had to hide from his team the fact that he had broken his toe.

All of this goes down a treat in a town that cherishes the days of football glory in the early Sixties, summed up by its most renowned supporter, Alastair Campbell, as "fantastic highs and some gravity-defying lows". The video When We Were Kings and the club book The Pride and the Glory are still big sellers locally. Accordingly, they love Ternent. One supporter even left him two goldfish in his will. And Ternent loves them right back, though he was masking it well on Friday. "If they're not moaning in Burnley, they're not happy. You can win 5-0 and they'll have a moan. I know 'em, I live here, they are good folks. But they moan about owt, keeps 'em happy."

Their massive support, the sort which roared his team to a 3-0 replay win over Fulham last month, keeps Ternent happy, too. The 4,500 tickets available for today's trip to Watford were gone, he says, a couple of hours after being put on sale. Those fans could, he thinks, see the unbeaten run stretched to 15 today "if my players perform to their full potential". But Watford beat them 2-1 at Vicarage Road in the League last November and, because they are at home, will be favourites again, Ternent thinks. "This will be a tough match," is his forecast.

Just for the moment, the push towards the play-offs is secondary, not least because further Cup success could even raise the possibility of Europe. "European Place in Clarets' Grasp" trilled the local paper. "We are Burnley, not Barcelona," was Ternent's rejoinder to that.

As for leading out his team on Cup final day, Ternent smiles a dismissive smile before adding, "Somebody has to do it, haven't they?" Meantime, as a non-stop provider of laughs, Stan Ternent will be reminding his men to go out and play today with a chuckle in their boots.