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Date and Place of Birth 6th November 1950 - STAVELEY
Transfers to and from Burnley from CHESTERFIELD - January 1972 (£50,000) released - May 1983
First and Last Burnley Games ORIENT (a) - 22nd January 1972
DERBY COUNTY (a) - 30th April 1983
Other Clubs CHESTERFIELD ---------------------------------------- ROTHERHAM UNITED, HARTLEPOOL UNITED |
Burnley Career Stats
| Season | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Others | Total | |||||
| apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | |
| 1971/72 | 17 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 17 | - |
| 1972/73 | 42 | - | 2 | - | 1 | - | 2 | - | 47 | - |
| 1973/74 | 40 | - | 5 | - | 3 | - | 8 | - | 56 | - |
| 1974/75 | 39 | - | 1 | - | 3 | - | - | - | 43 | - |
| 1975/76 | 22 | - | - | - | 5 | - | - | - | 27 | - |
| 1976/77 | 32 | - | 3 | - | - | - | 1 | - | 36 | - |
| 1977/78 | 42 | - | 2 | - | 4 | - | 3 | - | 51 | - |
| 1978/79 | 42 | - | 4 | - | 3 | - | 9 | - | 58 | - |
| 1979/80 | 40 | - | 2 | - | 2 | - | 3 | - | 47 | - |
| 1980/81 | 44 | - | 3 | - | 4 | - | 3 | - | 54 | - |
| 1981/82 | 46 | - | 6 | - | 2 | - | 4 | - | 58 | - |
| 1982/83 | 32 | - | 5 | - | 9 | - | - | - | 46 | - |
| Total | 438 | - | 33 | - | 36 | - | 33 | - | 540 | - |
Profile by Tony Scholes
If you were looking for a new goalkeeper in the early 1970s then Chesterfield seemed to be the first port of call. They'd built something of a reputation for grooming good goalkeepers, and that included England's Gordon Banks who had started his career with the Spirites.
Burnley were very much on the lookout for a new goalkeeper. It was a strange position for the club who had for many years been blessed with top goalkeepers including such as Jimmy Strong, Colin McDonald and Adam Blacklaw.
At the beginning of 1972, half way through our first season in division two following relegation, things weren't quite so good as far as the number one jersey was concerned. Peter Mellor was struggling to find anything like the form that he'd shown in his debut 1969/70 season and Tony Waiters was fast approaching his 35th birthday and had already been brought out of retirement to play for us eighteen months earlier.
A couple of months earlier young keeper Jeff Parton had been given a couple of games but had failed to impress. Despite all this there hadn't been much speculation that a new signing might be on the horizon.
Chesterfield meanwhile were having no such goalkeeper problems. They had a 21-year-old in goal by the name of Alan Stevenson. He'd won his place in their first team in October 1969 and had remained in the side ever since. He'd already passed 100 league appearances for the club and had picked up a fourth division championship medal in his first full season.
Stevenson was getting glowing reports and the scouts were flocking to watch him. It appeared only a matter of time before he would be on his way to a bigger club higher up the leagues, and so it proved in January 1972 although his destination was a big surprise.
Burnley had just gone out of the FA Cup at the first time of asking, beaten by Huddersfield in the third round at Turf Moor. The league form had been mixed and there was no doubt that the goalkeeping position was of some concern.
Even so it was a shock when the news broke that we'd landed the Chesterfield goalkeeper for a £50,000 fee, the second highest fee we'd paid behind the £60,000 fee for Paul Fletcher almost a year earlier.
I think most had expected him to go to a first division club and not one struggling to find its feet after dropping out of the top flight. Manager Jimmy Adamson, along with his chief scout Dave Blakey (a former Chesterfield player himself), Joe Brown and Brian Miller had travelled over to speak to Stevenson and actually met the player at Woodall Services on the M1. By the time they left, Stevenson was a Burnley player.
He went straight into the Burnley team for our next game, an away game against Orient. We lost the game 1-0. A week later he kept his first clean sheet in a 1-0 home win against Norwich, but things weren't going too well for the Clarets and we won just three of his first eleven games with manager Adamson coming under some real pressure.
In the last two of those games Stevenson had conceded no fewer than eight goals and questions were being asked about him given the big fee, but he and Burnley turned it round in no uncertain manner. We'd six games remaining in the season. All six were won and Stevenson conceded just two goals.
His first full season at Burnley proved to be a special one for both player and club. Stevenson's form was key as Burnley cruised to promotion, clinching the championship on the last day of the season at Preston. He was one of six ever presents in the team that season and such was his form that he was called up for the England Under-23 squad.
He kept eighteen clean sheets in that league season, including a run of five straight games in April. Yet, the performance I'll recall most from 1972/73 came in a 3-0 FA Cup replay defeat at Anfield.
Paul Fletcher jokes about the best of the saves that night from Peter Cormack, but in reality it was a stunner in a stunning performance. If anyone didn't think we had a top goalkeeper before then, they certainly knew it after this game.
The first season back in the first division saw Stevenson called up for the full England squad. The first choice goalkeepers at the time were Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence but both were in opposition in an FA Cup semi-final replay between Leicester and Liverpool.
England travelled to Lisbon for a friendly against Portugal with Stevenson and QPR's Phil Parkes in the squad. It was Parkes who got the nod from Alf Ramsey on a night when Martin Dobson made his England debut.
On the same night Burnley faced Manchester United at Old Trafford in a first division game without the influential pair in the side. We drew 3-3 and Parton, in goal, had something of a poor game in what proved to be his last Burnley appearance.
Who knows? Had Ramsey not been sacked then Stevenson might have got the full England cap that his performances with Burnley so merited. But he had to settle for winning 11 under-23 caps, one of which incredibly saw him play up front alongside Fletcher.
It all happened because former Blackburn manager Ken Furphy, who was in charge that night, believed he could make three outfield substitutions but in fact could make just two. That meant Mervyn Day, coming on as the third substitute, had to go in goal so Stevenson was moved up front.
Burnley had enjoyed a successful first season back in the top flight and had reached the FA Cup semi-final and come within a point of qualifying for Europe via the league. We continued to do well in the next season but 1975/76 wasn't to be a good one for club or goalkeeper.
We were relegated and Stevenson lost his place to the young Gerry Peyton in December 1975, the goalkeeper who had been signed from non-league Atherstone Town. He played only three more games that season and it was still Peyton in goal when the 1976/77 season got underway.
It looked as though he might be sold, but after a difficult start to the season Peyton was dropped, Stevenson was back in and it was Peyton who was sold to Fulham. For almost six years his place was never to come under threat again.
They weren't good years for Burnley as we dropped further down the league into the third division. There was the brief success with the Anglo Scottish Cup win in 1978 but then things turned in our favour in the 1981/82 season when we went on a run of 20 games without defeat and won the third division.
A year earlier he'd created a club record of seven successive clean sheets, beating the previous record by two games, and again as the title was lifted he was in top form.
That season also saw him receive a testimonial from the club. It was a special night against Manchester City and all credit to their manager John Bond who insisted that Trevor Francis and Joe Corrigan, who had been on England duty in Spain the night before, turned up on their return and played.
They both played in the second half and when Bond himself came on for City there were cries from the Burnley fans for our manager Brian Miller to do likewise. Miller didn't let them down. The two managers had also taken part in a penalty shoot out at half time alongside their chairmen John Jackson and City's Peter Swailes. Bond's penalty technique proved to be the winner.
Things changed sadly for Stevenson in the next season. It was the strange season of great cup runs but poor league form, of one cup semi-final and a run to the quarter-final in another yet relegation straight back to the third division.
Stevenson's form was nothing like it had been. He was dropped for the Boxing Day home game against Blackburn but won it back when his replacement Billy O'Rourke had a nightmare at Bolton in January, even allowing the Bolton keeper Jim McDonough to score.
On 30th April 1983, Stevenson had a disappointing game in a 2-0 defeat at Derby County. It was his 438th league appearance for the Clarets leaving him just one behind both John Angus and Jimmy McIlroy who held the club's post-war record.
An away game at Shrewsbury followed three days later with Grimsby at home the following week. Those two games would see Stevenson break the record, or should have done. Manager Frank Casper had different ideas. He dropped his goalkeeper after the Derby defeat. Stevenson would never play for Burnley again and so he remains just one appearance behind Angus and McIlroy and fourth in the all time list with Jerry Dawson's 522 appearances way ahead of the rest.
Casper released him at the end of that season and he signed for Rotherham United. We'd been relegated together, Rotherham in suspicious circumstances with their chairman lending money to Derby County who survived against all the odds.
In December 1983 he lined up for Rotherham against us at Millmoor and I witnessed one of the most incredible receptions for a former Burnley player. The teams warmed up with Rotherham down at the Tivoli end of the ground with the Burnley fans at the scrap yard end.
The teams switched ahead of kick off and Stevenson had to make his way down the pitch towards the Burnley fans. I don't think he'd got out of the penalty area at the far end when the applause started and it just built up and up as he approached us.
Stevenson was clearly moved by the reception as the applause was accompanied by the singing of 'Oh Alan Alan, Alan Alan Alan Alan Stevenson'. I've seen players go back to their old clubs and get good receptions, and those Ade Akinbiyi received at Gillingham and Wolves were memorable, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this since.
He lost his place during that season at Rotherham and in the next season signed for Hartlepool, initially on loan. That proved to be the masterstroke that led him into his next career on the commercial side of the game.
He doubled up at Hartlepool by working in the commercial office and eventually became their commercial manager. He went on to do similar roles for Middlesbrough, West Brom, Huddersfield and Coventry.
But it is as a goalkeeper that I'll remember Alan Stevenson. I'd say he's the second best I've seen for Burnley and that's praise indeed from me when I only place him behind my hero Adam Blacklaw.
He proved to be an inspirational signing by Jimmy Adamson. They say good teams need good goalkeepers and for some eleven years we had a damn good one. Why on earth he never won a full England cap is a question I struggle to answer. Had Don Revie not got the job then I'm sure he would have.
He was a good all round sportsman. He represented Derbyshire at table tennis and could also have played cricket for his county had he chosen too. I think Burnley fans were delighted it was football he chose ahead of the other sports.
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