BRIAN Pilkington has enjoyed a 50-year love affair with football that shows no sign of ending.

The Burnley winger who graced Turf Moor for a decade and won a League Championship medal in 1960 scaled the heights with the Clarets and also won an England cap.

And at the age of 66 his enthusiasm for the game obviously hasn't dimmed, despite the fact that much of his energy is now directed into a club struggling at the wrong end of the Unibond Premier League.

On the board of Chorley, Pilkington retains the passion and optimism of any football fan.

"We are struggling at the moment but it's a very thin line between the top half of the table and the bottom.

"Like the Football League you get what you pay for with the standard of centre-forwards and we just need someone to put the ball in the net regularly," he said.

How Chorley could do with a Ray Pointer, a Jimmy Robson or a John Connelly who plundered 57 goals betweem them as Burnley won the First Division title.

Pilkington helped provide the ammunition from the left flank and also weighed in with some important goals himself, none more so than the first in Burnley's championship-clinching win at Maine Road.

Not suprisingly that victory in the final game of the 1959/60 campaign ranks as a career highlight for Pilkington, who quickly chalked up another when he scored a brace in the home leg of the Clarets' European Cup clash with Hamburn the season after.

"When we won the championship we had about nine internationals. How couldn't you have a good side?" said Pilkington, who joined that select band when winning his sole cap against Northern Ireland in Belfast in 1954.

The Leyland-born winger moved from Leyland Motors to Burnley in 1951 and between then and his departure to Bolton mid-way through the 1960/61 season he never played outside the top flight. "At that time we were up there on a par with Manchester United and Arsenal. I was looking back the other day at the teams who were interested in signing me at one time.

"There were about 14 and the Evertons, United and Arsenals have stayed up there while we seem to have lost touch.

"A club like that shouldn't be where they are now but I think it's like anything else, it's money.

"The ground there is Premiership standard. Everything about it is right. They just need a team to go with it."

Barry Kilby and Stan Ternent are currently working at that bit and with Kilby's financial backing the future looks brighter.

"Let's hope they turn the corner," Pilkington added. "With the team now they are doing quite well.

"If they can just pick up a bit and get to the play-offs, although if they do go up it will be a different league again and they will be looking for some different players."

Pilkington, a guest at Turf Moor on occasions when his Chorley commitments allow, ended his Football League career at Barrow after a short spell at Bury followed his days at Burnden Park.

He helped the Cumbrian club into Division Three for the first time in 1967 and was offered a new two-year contract. But with the future to consider he took up a job in the property business offered by a friend and it turned out to be a shrewd move.

He soon took on his own estate agency business which he has run in Leyland for 30 years, although he is now semi-retired.

He also enjoyed spells as manager of Leyland and Chorley and around all of that has fitted in a 31-year career as a magistrate.

Some of today's footballing moneybags may not have to work so hard.

"With respect, everybody says good luck to them but I think it's got a bit out of hand," claimed Pilkington.

"It's gone silly and at the end of the day only football people can stop it and say enough's enough.

"How can anybody be worth so much and kids of 21 become millionaires ? It's immoral.

"I think they get paid far too much - and that's not sour grapes.

"I would rather have played when I did. I enjoyed it so much. It was superb and we had a real laugh.

"I would have played for nothing and I wish I was still young enough to play now.

"But from non-league to international back to non-league I've been involved for 50 years so that can't be bad."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.