The Hall of Fame Number 32 – Alex Elder

Date of Birth: 25th April 1941 Place of Birth: Glentoran Burnley debut: Preston North End (a) 15th September 1959 Other Clubs Glentoran Stoke City

On Saturday 7^th May 1966 Leeds beat Burnley 1-0 at Turf Moor thus allowing the Yorkshire side to pip us for second place in the First Division behind Champions Liverpool. The goal was a bizarre own goal from our left-back Alex Elder.

We are not going to go into detail about the goal and have started with it just to get it out of the way. Whenever Alex is talked about that goal is always recalled and it is somewhat unfair that one mistake should be highlighted when over an eight year period he became surely Burnley’s finest ever left-back.

Make no mistake, this quiet unassuming Irishman was that good. In 1963 he was selected to play for the Rest of the World against England to mark the Football Association’s centenary with the great West German Karl Heinz Schnellinger the other left-back in the squad.

He was the very last piece in Harry Potts’ Championship jigsaw and was signed when just seventeen in January of 1959 for £5,000 from Irish League club Glentoran, the club from whom we had previously signed Jimmy McIlroy.

He spent the rest of that 1958/59 season in the reserves and that is where he remained when the 1959/60 season got underway. Not for long though and in the eighth game of that momentous season he made his debut against Preston and the great Tom Finney.

We lost to Preston but Elder didn’t. He had won his place and he kept it for the rest of that fantastic season missing only one game at Forest and that so he could make his international debut.

At 19 he was the youngest member of the Championship side and alongside Jimmy Mac the only one who had cost us any money but that £5,000 had already proved to be money well spent.

Elder had just about everything, a strong tackler, great positional sense, a superb passer and was ahead of his time as a full back who loved to get forward. He was only ever going to get better and he certainly did.

He played in our European Cup campaign of 1960/61 and then in the FA Cup Final Wembley side of 1962. It was during this cup run that he scored his first goal in a Burnley shirt. It came in the 3^rd round 6-1 home win against Queens Park Rangers. The goal came twenty minutes from the end when he crashed in an unstoppable shot from the edge of the box at the cricket field end.

Turf Moor erupted as Elder disappeared when his teammates surrounded him to celebrate with him and congratulate him on that first goal in Claret & Blue.

A broken leg in pre-season 1963 cost him his place in the side for the first time but he returned to full fitness during that season to win his place back. That was to be the only time he was to lose his place.

With the Championship days over Burnley rebuilt and he was by now even better as we chased that title in 1966. By this time he was also the club captain having taken over from Brian Miller at the start of that season. We finished third in a season where we won as many points as the Championship side six years earlier.

Despite that 3^rd place finish it was enough to see us back into Europe with the rule changes allowing towns to compete in the Fairs Cup and he led us to a Quarter-Final that ended in defeat to German side Eintracht Frankfurt.

It was though to be Alex Elder’s last season for Burnley and he reluctantly followed the same route as his international teammates Jimmy McIlroy by signing for Stoke City. He was just 26 when Burnley accepted £50,000 for him and it appeared that he would have a long and successful stay at the Victoria Ground.

It wasn’t to be though, he picked up a knee injury during pre-season training and it troubled him for the rest of his career. In six years with the Potters, apparently far from happy years, he made just 83 league appearances.

A few years ago I happened to arrive for a Turf Moor book launch at the same time as Alex and his wife and as we went in he tried to tell me that he was fortunate that as an ordinary player he played in such a great team.

I pointed it out to him that it was because of his talent that he was in the side and was one of the reasons for it being such a great team.

Alex Elder was the Burnley left-back who was described by the great Brazilian Pele as the best full back in the world. I for one am not going to even consider disagreeing with the opinion of the greatest player I ever saw play football.