“You can’t say that. You’ll be lynched if you do, Jack.”

Too bad. Here goes.

CONGRATULATIONS, BURNLEY, ON A FANTASTIC SEASON, AND VERY WELL-DESERVED PROMOTION.

For the avoidance of doubt, I’d be saying the same even if I were not standing down at the next election.

Like almost everyone at our end of the valley, I’m passionately partisan for Rovers. I had also lulled myself into the belief that the Clarets could and would never beat us. After all, until March 9 this year, they had not done since the election in 1979 when I first became an MP. It was almost God-given that however bad things were for Rovers, they were always worse for Burnley.

That’s changed. We should respect the club, its board, its manager Sean Dyche, and its players, for the fact that the Clarets really have made their own luck.

John Banaszkiewicz, co-chairman, told this paper that the club’s success showed that football was not all about money – and he’s right.

There’s been no high-spending oligarch buying the club. They’ve done this themselves, by great leadership and management, and extraordinary commitment from everyone, especially the fans.

The comparison between the good fortune of Clarets, despite its very tight budget, and the disaster unfolding thirty miles south at Old Trafford, at Britain’s ‘richest club’, should be the stuff of sermons for years to come.

In most ways, too, Burnley’s success is good for everyone in East Lancashire, whether they support other teams, or none.

Of course, if Rovers play the Clarets, it’s a zero-sum.

We can’t both have the points (and if we’d won last month, not lost, we’d be in the play-offs as things stand). But having a successful, well-run club in the top-flight of English football should help the whole area, just as happened when this accolade was Rovers’.

More and more, I am struck how the common factors binding East Lancashire together are much more powerful than local rivalries – including that most potent rivalry of all, between Ewood Park, and Turf Moor.