Footballers can score goals, but there are other players with the talent to consistently be in the ideal location to score, known as goal scorers.
We had one of these players in the 1960s who is unquestionably the best goalscorer I’ve ever seen in a Burnley shirt. They are worth their weight in any team, and they frequently transform loses into draws and draws into wins.
The player is called Willie Irvine, and from 1963 to 1968 he was one of the best goal scorers in English football. However, his career was ruined and terminated early due to a serious injury, but before that he was a player who thrilled Burnley fans.
At the age of seventeen, he moved to Burnley from his native Northern Ireland and rapidly got going. My father was usually talking about the first team players when I first started supporting Burnley, but he also mentioned this young man named Irvine, remarking that it seemed like he was scoring goals for joy in the youth teams at the time, according to the local newspaper.
“It looks like we’ve got a good on here,” he would tell me about a player who was scoring so many goals for the B team and then the A team. Of course, he hadn’t seen him play but just over a year after arriving, Burnley fans did get that opportunity when he made a reserve team debut against Barnsley.
That day he had a goal disallowed and missed a penalty, and taking penalties was something that didn’t come comfortably for him. It wasn’t to be a disappointing debut for him alongside Willie Morgan who was also making his reserve team debut. Burnley won and, despite the disallowed goal and the missed penalty, he announced his arrival with a hat trick.
Such was the strength and quality of the players available at the time, he couldn’t even win a regular place in the reserve team in that 1961/62 season when we won the Central League, but he stepped things up in the 1962/63 season and how. Becoming a regular reserve team player, he was scoring goal after goal. While Burnley fans wondered if he’d get a call to the first team, it was his country who first came calling and he made an international debut in February 1963 for the Northern Ireland under-23 team. Two months later he won a first full cap but was still waiting for a first team game at Burnley.
It happened during the season’s last away game. Irvine traveled to Arsenal with the first team but wasn’t expecting to play; in fact, he didn’t expect to play, but manager Harry Potts decided to avoid causing any unnecessary anxiety by letting him know as late as possible. At Highbury, Burnley triumphed 3-2, and Irvine got things going with the game’s first goal. There was only one more game in the season, which was played at home against Birmingham. He kept his spot and scored three goals as we defeated them 3-1 to complete the season.
At the start of the 1963–1964 season, fans may have been delighted about the possibility of having Irvine join the squad, but management was not as thrilled. His next appearance didn’t come until the final six games of the season, when he replaced Jimmy Robson after playing in the opening game at Ipswich. He hadn’t scored at Ipswich, but he did in the following six contests, when he did so four times.
The following two and a half years with Andy Lochhead were particularly memorable for this exceptional goal scorer. In 33 league appearances during the 1964–1965 season, he scored 22 goals, and he added three more in the FA Cup. In the following season, he performed better. He participated in every league game this time and scored 29 goals.
Even added a further eight goals in seven cup games, including a hat trick against Spurs in the FA Cup when we lost 4-3.
Burnley set a new post-war record with 29 league goals, surpassing Ray Pointer’s 27 goals from seven years prior. At Villa Park, a number of Burnley supporters ran onto the field to celebrate the record-breaking 28th goal. The cops dealt with those brazen Burnley supporters at the time swiftly and appropriately. He scored in the following game, a 2-0 victory over Liverpool, but he did not score in the final three games, where we had thought he would push the total above thirty.
His partnership with Andy Lochhead during these two seasons was incredible, Lochhead himself adding 36 goals to Irvine’s 51 in the league. The second of those seasons took us to third place in the league. We had as good a strike pair in the league apart from Jimmy Greaves and Alan Gilzean at Spurs.
Everything looked set and things continued just about at then same rate in the following season. By January of 1967, Irvine had already scored another thirteen goals in 23 games and Lochhead was ahead of him with 18. Then, disaster struck in the FA Cup replay at Everton when Irvine sustained a broken leg, the victim of a disgraceful challenge by Johnny Morrisey. He was out for the season and Lochhead didn’t score again in the remaining games. From looking set for another top finish, we had to settle for fourteenth place.
Willie was back for the 1967/68 season and, predictably, scored in his return game against Coventry on the opening day. He had a productive run in the League Cup, scoring five in five, but netted just six times in the league in nineteen appearances.
He wasn’t anything like the same player and coupled with that was his relationship with Jimmy Adamson which led to him asking for a transfer from the club he never wanted to leave. At the end of October that season he scored the last goal in a 2-2 draw at Southampton. It proved to be his last league goal for us and at the end of February, in a 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest, he played his last Burnley game.
He found his form again at Preston before moving on to Brighton in 1971, initially on loan. He was in the Brighton team promoted to the Second Division in 1972 that brought him an appearance against Burnley at the Goldstone Ground.
He’d done well for both of these clubs but left Brighton in December of the 1972/73 season and signed for Halifax where he played until the end of the season before calling time on his career at the age of just 29. He left Halifax having played back at Burnley in the John Angus testimonial against their wishes
Irvine did get a Turf Moor return; alongside his former partner Lochhead he entertained corporate guests as host which included thoroughly enjoyable ground tours when he would almost humbly avoid discussions about his own contribution to our club.
It was only after his playing career had ended that I first got to know Willie Irvine but I became a victim of his professionalism on the occasion I played cricket against him. When I went into bat, he was at first slip. Did he invent sledging? I wouldn’t have minded that but he then took a blinding catch there to dismiss me before my innings had even got underway.
I’ve known him for a long, long time and I’ve had many a conversation with him about his goalscoring exploits and also about goalscorers in particular. On the subject of goalscorers, I know just how highly he rated Andy Payton who he felt might just have broken his record in 2000 before falling two short.
Willie was honoured by Burnley FC Supporters Groups in 2016, fifty years on after breaking the club post-war goalscoring record in one season and received their Special Achievement Award.
The record books will show that he scored 78 league goals for Burnley, a total that increases to 97 with cup goals. They came in just 126 (league) and 148 (total) appearances which is a superb return.
We have to remember that he was just 23 when he suffered that broken leg. You have to wonder just how many goals he would have scored for us had he not sustained that injury in January 1967. He would have smashed all club records I’m sure, although most likely we’d have sold him for a record, massive transfer fee and then had to see him scoring his goals for one of the country’s top clubs.
He’s remained a Claret to this day and still attends as many games as possible at Turf Moor, sitting now with his eldest son Darren.
I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone better than Willie Irvine – for me he is our greatest ever goalscorer.
Leave a Reply