Pleasure and pain of a cup final memory

HE earned a unique two Charity Shield medals while at Burnley, won the First Division Championship while playing part time, and interrupted his playing career to graft as a labourer on the M62.

Yet Jimmy Robson will always be remembered as the player who scored the 100th FA Cup Final goal in the 1962 Wembley clash with great rivals Tottenham Hotspur.

The classic picture of the milestone strike will forever illuminate the club's history books.

Yet for Robson, the overriding memory of the day will always be ending up on the losing side.

"We were the two biggest sides around at that time, so it was a cup final everyone was looking forward to," recalled Robson.

"Unfortunately, it turned out to be a day to forget really.

"I know I scored the 100th goal in a cup final, but at the time I had no idea and it's a small consolation when you end up with a loser's medal."

Forty two years on, Burnley's class of 2004 are preparing to do battle with Tottenham Hotspur again, this time on a far from level playing field.

The two clubs are now polarised in terms of stature, with Spurs still a fully-paid up member of the 'big five' while the Clarets struggle in the harsh financial climate of life outside the Premiership.

But that famous Wembley clash of 42 years ago, in front of 100,000 fans, means the memories come flooding back to a legion of Clarets fans every time the two teams' paths cross.

"It probably set the benchmark," admits Robson, now 65. "The Spurs side had great players that people still know, like Danny Blanchflower and Jimmy Greaves who both scored, while we were a great team with the likes of Jimmy McIlroy, Jimmy Adamson, John Connelly and many others.

"I don't remember too much about the day, only the final itself. They had the experience of being in the Cup Final the year before and beating Leicester, and they seemed to settle quicker than us and passed the ball around so comfortably.

"I was fortunate enough to get the equaliser, but we hardly had time to settle before they took the lead again and that was that!

"I did have another goal disallowed for offside that would have made it 2-2 and I suppose we should have known then it wasn't to be our day."

Robson still made it into the quiz books for his solitary Wembley strike, although the unusual honour of being the only Burnley player to hold two Charity Shield medals is the answer to the question that would surely flummox most Clarets fans.

Senior supporters will no doubt recall the Charity Shield clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers in August 1960, but his second medal came against Tottenham a year later as part of an England XI selected to play the double-winners at White Hart Lane.

By now, Robson had his own First Division winners medal, earned as the Clarets stormed to the 1960 title.

Not bad for a part-time electrician!

He recalled: "I served my time as an electrician and, back then, there were four or five of us Burnley lads who would have gone into the Forces because conscription was still in force.

"If we had gone, we would have gone for two years, but conscription was due to finish the year after and we had the option of going into the pits and only doing one year, so the club sent Adam Blacklaw, John Angus, John Connelly, Brian Miller and myself to Bank Hall.

"It's amazing to think we all won the First Division title while we were part-time, but that's how things were.

"In midweek we would go out to the pit at 7am, come out at three, go to bed for a couple of hours and then play for the first team at night.

"Training used to be Tuesdays and Thursdays full-time, but we still had to go down the pit before and after.

"The pit owners were quite happy with that and we didn't mind too much because we were probably the fittest lads in the team!"

Robson went on to play a major role in the Clarets' success of the 1960s, only reluctantly ending his nine-year association with the club when then manager Harry Potts opted to offload him to Blackpool.

He said: "I was settled in the town and any move from Burnley was a backward step then because you were leaving a team that were champions a few years earlier."

Three years at Blackpool followed, before he joined Barnsley in 1968, leaving Oakwell two years later and undertaking a strange career change.

"I ended up working on the motorway," Robson laughed. "It was the first time I'd been out of football and there I was working as a labourer on the M62.

"Thankfully, I only did that for four weeks before I got picked up by Bury. I went there for two and a half years and then ended up back at Burnley again as player and then youth coach until 1974."

A milk round followed after Robson fell out of love with the game, but once again the fire was rekindled after two years and he returned to football, first as a coach at Rochdale and then as reserve team manager with Huddersfield.

Eight years later, he was on the move again following a change of manager, going back at Rochdale for the best part of a decade before ex-Burnley manager Stan Ternent - a former Turf Moor colleague - rang and gave him the chance to come 'home' to coach the club's youngsters before he earned a well-deserved retirement last summer.