Casting a spell to help beloved Burnley score more goals... could it be magic? | Dave Thomas

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The magazine comes six times a year and is packed with the history of the club. I was going through a pile of back issues the other day trying to find some information and came across something from way back in 2015.

Players at Burnley had suffered one cruciate ligament after another, something like five in total in the space of just 18 months, and everybody was wondering why so many in such a short space of time.

Anyway, this came to the attention of Kevin Carlyon, who at the time was Britain’s leading white witch and, as we all know, white witches do good deeds. Kevin therefore decided to do his best to lift the curse of the cruciate and in his wisdom, he put them down to the nearness of Pendle close by, the home of the Pendle Witches.

At this point allow me to digress and tell you that Alice Nutter, found guilty of witchcraft, but wholly innocent, is my 10 x great grandmother.

Yes folks, I have Pendle Witch origins. Mrs T did my family tree and managed to get back to Alice Nutter. By all accounts there are a lot of Nutters in Blackburn

Alice in fact was arrested when she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but nevertheless was carted off to Lancaster jail, a grim and gloomy place, to be tried and hanged. No amount of prayer on her part spared her a gruesome end. All very upsetting.

Meanwhile... Kevin Carlyon, doing his best to lift the curse of the knobbly knees, dug out his book of lotions, commotions and potions, communed with the spirits, lit his candles, and began to wonder if it was a Blackburn fan that had been up Pendle Hill and laid the curse. Kevin then got going with his incantations, chants and rhymes to counteract the malicious and demonic energies that he said were clearly targeting the club.

Not only that, but Burnley had shipped a few goals at the time and he kindly laid a psychic wall across the goals to give them extra, added protection.

Clearly you could argue that all this was and is a load of rubbish. Was it the psychic wall, or was it Tom Heaton that was doing the trick? We have still lost games, but amazingly the cruciate injuries have been far less in number.

So, who are we to say that this witch stuff is all hocus pocus?

Since Kevin worked his magic, we have had unprecedented success in the Premier League, hiccups have occurred, yesm there have been a few bad days, but here we are still plugging away at the top table and now in prospect is a sixth consecutive season in the Prem.

And me. I don’t discount witches and ghostly stuff. I once took a school trip to Beadnell Hall in Northumberland and swear the place was haunted.

But that’s another story, however, for another day.