THE kids who Kenny Burns met when he turned up at Hillwood Football Club’s summer training camp at their new multi-million pound sports hub in the Priesthill area of Glasgow earlier this week needed to ask a coach, a parent, a grandparent even, who their special guest was.
Yet, the trophy which Burns, the former Birmingham City, Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Derby County and Scotland player who started out in the game at Hillwood a lifetime ago, arrived holding was instantly recognisable to all of them.
Every member of the legendary Forest sides which lifted the European Cup in 1979 and then again in 1980 was presented with a replica of the iconic piece of silverware to keep by their club afterwards.
The man who was deployed at centre-half in their 1-0 victories over Malmo in the Olympiastadion in Munich and Hamburg in the Bernabeu in Madrid thought that taking his along might give the kids a bit of a thrill.
He wasn’t wrong. The impact which seeing, quite unexpectedly, the greatest prize in club football suddenly appear in their midst during their school holidays was considerable.
Read more:
-
Brendan Rodgers has enough talent to beat Kairat - Celtic must reach Champions League
-
Brendan Rodgers makes stark admission over new signings after Celtic board fan abuse
-
Less Belgian waffle needed from Russell Martin and Rangers as £40m pay day slips away
This old guy used to play at Hillwood? And he won the Champions League twice? The same tournament that Paris Saint-Germain triumphed in last season? That’s absolutely incredible. Can I hold it? Can I get my picture taken with it? It was a day they will cherish forever.
Burns was only too happy to give something back to a renowned Glasgow institution which he joined when it was formed way back in 1966, has retained close links with over the years despite moving down south to pursue a career in professional football decades ago and understands that he owes a debt of gratitude to.
“I grew up not far away on Peat Road in Nitshill,” he said. “My mum and dad both passed away when I was young and it was my brothers and my sisters who looked after me. But I played football for The Boys’ Brigade and then Hillwood when they started up.
“Willie Smith was our manager. He got in decent players and very quickly we became a decent team. It was an excellent, well-organised club and it was just along the road. We played every week and kept on winning matches. Before long, scouts were coming to watch us. Rangers, who were my team as a boy, asked me to join them.
“You have to learn your trade in football and I did that at Hillwood. They gave me a great grounding and I am grateful to them for that. Willie is still there and the club has its own artificial pitch and a complex with changing rooms and what have you now. I honestly don’t know how he has done it. He has worked miracles.
“Everything the kids need is there. There are lots of different age groups and they were all there enjoying themselves when I went along. I didn’t expect any of them to know who I was, but I thought they might know what the big cup that I was carrying was and they did. I hope it was a buzz for them.”
“I've got dementia,” he said. “I’m struggling to remember things now. I can recall things from years ago for some reason. I can have no difficulty remembering a name or a game from way back in the day. But sometimes I can’t remember what I was told five minutes earlier.
“I’ve been advised to see this doctor and that doctor since I was told I had dementia. I need to take tablets every day now. But I suppose that’s true of pretty much anyone over the age of 60. To be honest, I feel as good physically as I have at any time in my life.
“But I am trying to sell my house in Derby just now. I want to move back up to Scotland to be nearer to my family. I want to be as close as I can to my daughter Rachel. I have grandkids now, too, many of them. Do you want some?
“My daughter tells me, ‘Dad, if you move up here we’ll be close to you and can get to you quicker than anybody if you conk out one day’. So that’s nice she’s thinking I’m going to pop my clogs! I reckon she’s just waiting to get their hands on my money! All joking aside, though, I would like to get back up the road to be near to them. Family is family.”
Read more:
-
Brendan Rodgers reiterates there's 'no chance' he'll walk away from Celtic again
-
Motherwell are quids in - but Scotland's pro youth set-up can't just cash in on kids
-
Nuno Espirito Santo admits relationship with Evangelos Marinakis is not good
Burns clearly hasn’t lost his devilish sense of humour. It is a blessing that he can still recollect the pivotal moments, epic matches, amazing incidents and colourful characters from his playing days so vividly. He has an abundance of hilarious anecdotes and is quite the raconteur.
His stories about playing under one Brian Howard Clough at Forest have doubtless been relayed a thousand times before. They are, though, as entertaining now as when they were first told.
“Ach, Cloughie was superb, just superb,” he said with a broad smile when we chatted in the sunshine down in Girvan, the Ayrshire town which is near to where his daughter stays, earlier on this week.
“I can remember him coming out of his dugout and going over to the touchline during one match. He shouted over to Stan Bowles (the talented but somewhat mercurial England forward who only spent a season at The City Ground before being offloaded). There had only been something like 20 minutes played. But Cloughie started screaming, ‘Come here! Come here!’
“Stan goes over to him and says, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ Cloughie says to him, ‘Get warmed up’. Stan says, ‘Eh? What do you mean? I’m already playing!’ Cloughie says, ‘Get warmed up. Because you’re coming off!’ He was nothing if not honest! You always knew where you stood with him.
“He used to give us four days off a week sometimes. After a game on Saturday he would say to us, ‘Right you lot, I don’t want to see you again until Thursday’. Players loved a day off so we were happy. It obviously worked. But we didn’t have a training ground as such, just a patch of grass near the stadium.”
“The Forest team got taken to the beach at Scarborough one day,” he said. “When we got there, Cloughie said to us, ‘Right, take your socks and shoes off, get in the sea and start paddling. But don’t be long’. So we went and paddled next to all the old folk for a bit. Then we got out and went to a hotel for a meal. Then we went home.
“I was speaking to our bus driver a couple of days later. I said, ‘That trip to Scarborough was a total waste of time wasn’t it? All that way just to go paddling? What was all that about?’ He said, ‘Not really. The reason we went was so I could deliver some furniture to Peter’s flat’.”
It wasn’t all a carry on though. Forest were a formidable team, a major force in the global game in fact, during that era. Burns, who was converted from a centre-forward into a centre-half after he was signed from Birmingham for £150,000 in 1977, could play a bit. He helped his new side to win a League Cup and First Division double in his debut season.
A glorious campaign was capped when he was named FWA Player of the Year. He is one of just eight Scots to receive that prestigious award in its 78 year existence. Bobby Collins, Dave Mackay, Billy Bremner, Frank McLintock, Kenny Dalglish, Steve Nicol and Gordon Strachan are the only others. He is, then, in illustrious company.
Read more:
But it was in the European Cup where he really made history. “I don't think we get the recognition we deserve for what we did,” he said. “Everybody still raves about Leicester City winning the English title. But what Forest did was absolutely unbelievable. Celtic have only won it once. Sames goes for Manchester City. But we won it two years running.
“We played Liverpool, who were the defending champions, in the first round and beat them. We didn’t lose to them once in two whole years. We kept clean sheets in both those European Cup games. And in both of the finals we played in as well. I loved clean sheets. They were like scoring goals to me.
“Cloughie always started at the back, always wanted to make sure his side was solid. He had me, Viv Anderson and Larry Lloyd there. Don’t get me wrong, he had some talented footballers. John Robertson was just class, Trevor Francis too. But he knew his team needed to be able to defend. We could handle ourselves.
“Before the second European Cup final against Hamburg at the Bernabeu, we were lined up in the tunnel waiting to go out. Larry saw Kevin Keegan standing across from him.
“He said, ‘Alright Kev! How you doing?’ Kevin said, ‘Alright big man, how are you?’ Larry leaned over and said, ‘I've got something to tell you. See big Burnsie here? He’s going to have you’. It was just a wee bit of b*******.”
He was pleased to see his old club take the Premier League by surprise last season and finish seventh, their highest placing in 30 years. He has been impressed by the job which current manager Nuno Espirito Santo has done since taking charge two years ago. He is looking forward to them returning to Europe for the first time since 1995 and competing in the Europa League in the coming months.
However, he has been disgusted at the shabby way that he and his fellow European Cup winners have been treated by the current hierarchy whenever they have returned to the City Ground.
He suspects their Portuguese-Sao Tomean coach Nuno has succeeded in spite of rather than because of the support he has received from upstairs.
“Nuno has done really well,” he said. “I have been very surprised. They have a few players who I have to admit I am not really keen on. Everybody has raved about their midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White. I heard somebody say recently he is going to be sold for £60m. But for me he is a bit fancy Dan, is a bit of a coward. He won’t go into a tackle for goodness sake.
“The defence is quite reliable. Their goalkeeper Matz Sels is very good indeed. He doesn’t let in many goals. They have one or two good players in midfield. But I’m afraid to say I think Chris Wood is just a big lump up front. He wins headers I’ll give him that, but he isn’t the fastest is he?
“After the draw with Leicester City last season, their chairman [Evangelos Marinakis] went down onto the pitch and started pointing his finger at the manager and shouting the odds. This is what has to happen! This is what I think you should do! He was bang out of order in my opinion. He shouldn’t be doing that at all.
Read more:
“I suppose nothing is ever perfect in football is it? But I don't go to watch Forest now. They’ve taken pictures down off the walls inside the stadium of old teams which guys like myself, John McGovern and John Robertson were members of back in the day. Sorry, but we were guys who gave everything for them, everything, and achieved a lot.
“They also want me to pay for a ticket when I got back, want me to fork out £46 to watch a team which I won the English title with and European Cup twice with. Make sure you put that in your article by the way. They want £46 off me to get in.
“I went to the unveiling of the Trevor Francis statue at the St Andrews Stadium earlier this month. I spent seven great years at Birmingham City and played with Trev there. When I was there, one of the Birmingham directors said to me, ‘If you ever want to come along to a game just get in touch and we’ll sort you out’. But Forest want me to pay. As I say, I don’t go any more. They don’t look after you.”
He could maybe be tempted along to Hampden to watch Scotland in action against Denmark, Greece and Belarus after they get their bid to reach the World Cup finals in Canada, Mexico and the United States next month.
He fears, however, that Steve Clarke’s men have no chance of qualifying for the first time since they reached France ‘98. “I don’t think it will happen, no,” he said. “I know they’ve qualified for a couple of Euros, but I just don’t think they got enough players who are good enough. They have some good players, but not enough.”
As someone who played alongside, to name just a handful, Billy Bremner, Martin Buchan, Kenny Dalglish, Archie Gemmill, Eddie Gray, Davie Hay, Sandy Jardine, Joe Jordan, Denis Law, Danny McGrain, Alex McLeish, Gordon McQueen, Willie Miller, John Robertson and Graeme Souness when he donned a dark blue jersey, his ambivalence about the current crop is maybe understandable.
“It was a great honour to go with Scotland to a World Cup,” he said. “I would have been honoured just to be a member of the squad, even if I hadn’t played a game. But there were a few things that I didn’t like once we got there.
“One was our goalkeeper Alan Rough. He got beat twice at the near post and a goalkeeper should never get beat at his near post. I spoke to Peter Shilton about it when I got home and he agreed. All the hype before the tournament, all that Ally’s Army stuff, was a bit much. It was ridiculous. The whole experience was bitterly disappointing.”
There are far more important things for Burns to concern himself with than the outcome of a game of football or the success of a qualifying campaign at the moment.
Mercifully, he isn’t facing his dementia fight along. His family are a constant source of comfort to him. He has also been touched by the support which he has been received from the wider football community. He will doubtless face his illness with the same bravery that he always exhibited when he was a player.
“The PFA down in England have been very helpful to me,” he said. “There have been a few old players who have been diagnosed with dementia in recent years. Poor Gordon McQueen, a brilliant player, lightning quick over 10 to 15 yards, passed away from it a couple of years ago sadly. I have appreciated all the assistance I have had. It is just life I suppose, you have to deal with it as best you can.”
