MENTION the name Ralph Coates and most football supporters on a national scale will think of a balding midfielder who kept Spurs at the forefront of English and European soccer in the first half of the seventies.

But in these parts, Coates is more fondly remembered as a key player in arguably the last Burnley side to regard Division One as their rightful place in the pecking order of the Football League.

Comforting for them, Coates also looks back at his time at Turf Moor as a high point in his career.

"I played some of my best football at Burnley. Their's is the first result I look for and it's a bit anxiously at the moment looking at their position.

"It is sad but I know that a lot of effort is going in to turning it round, although it's going to take a lot of effort," said the former England international who collected half of his four caps while playing for the Clarets. Born in County Durham, Coates joined Burnley as an apprentice and made his first-team debut two years later in December 1964.

He played eight games in that season when Burnley finished 12th in Division One.

Next season, Coates' first full one in the side, the Clarets claimed third place behind champions Liverpool.

"It was the good old days. We often talk about Burnley down here and I get out the scrap book and point to Burnley top of the table after 30-odd games with Manchester United second and Liverpool third," said Coates, who now lives in St Albans and yesterday started a new job running a sporting complex in Chelmsford.

Burnley finished 14th in the table for the next four years as the team changed and, after finishing 21st in 1971 to be relegated, Coates was sold to Spurs for just under £200,000.

He had made 257 starting appearances for the Clarets, scoring 32 goals, and had bridged a generation at Turf Moor.

"I was very fortunate. Last year I went to a reunion do and I was the only one who could relate it to eras," he explained.

"I played with the likes of Willie Irvine, Andy Lochead, Ray Pointer, Alex Elder and John Angus. "I was young then but, when everybody had gone through transfers or the end of their careers, I found myself being the general of players like Dave Thomas, Steve Kindon, Colin Waldron, Frank Casper, Martin Dobson and Alan Weston."

From the conductor of Burnley's orchestra and having helped them into Europe and the semi-finals of the League Cup in 1969, Coates became a support act when he first moved to White Hart Lane and admitted that he took time to settle in after a hastily arranged transfer.

"It was a bit of a hectic period for me. I was in the England squad playing in the Home Internationals and then I was fortunate enough to be chosen for the squad for Mexico.

"I was left in the dark and was told they had already agreed a fee and all I needed to do was agree personal terms with Bill Nicholson," said Coates who met and ironed out the details with the Spurs boss at the Moat House Hotel near Stoke. "Spurs were in Europe which was a big factor in going there but it was still a terrible wrench leaving Burnley.

"I owed them such a lot and even now I get letters from Burnley supporters. It was a terribly emotional experience when I went back to Turf Moor to do a half-time draw.

"If I am honest I didn't really reach the standards I required of myself at first but after I scored the winning goal for Spurs in the League Cup final it started to turn.

"When I left Burnley I was more or less a midfield general with the kids in the side.

"When I got to Spurs they put me on the wing which was a bit of a culture shock but then I had a chat with Bill Nicholson and he put me in midfield.

"Playing well again coincided with that and the League Cup final and the following year I was player-of-the-year at Spurs."

The League Cup final success in 1973 followed on from winning the Uefa Cup a year earlier and in 1974 Spurs lost in the final of the Uefa Cup to Feyenoord.

Coates, 53 next month, played 173 League games for the London club until 1978 when he joined Leyton Orient via a short loan spell to Australian club St George's. He played a further 76 games to take his League appearances to 463 before hanging up his boots.

From football he joined Barnet council as sports and leisure development officer and has remained in the leisure industry since, with a job in the game that had been his life not appealing to him at the time.

"I didn't have that strong feeling that I would like to do it, although I would like to get back into it in some stage, not in the managerial capacity I wouldn't have thought, but perhaps with the development of youngsters at the academies," he added.

Coates is firmly settled in the south but retains friends and contacts in Burnley which is never far from his thoughts at a critical time for the club.

"You feel so helpess. You just wish you get your boots on and help," he said.

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