WHEN Ian Brennan returned from 13 months out with a broken leg that had threatened to end his career the landscape around Turf Moor had changed considerably.

The marauding left-back had suffered the injury when Burnley were a Division One side under the guidance of Jimmy Adamson, but he returned in October 1976 to a team struggling in Division Two under Joe Brown.

Once back fit Brennan became a regular again, but a run of 14 games without a win in the second tier cost Brown his job in February, to be replaced by the legendary Harry Potts, the manager who guided the Clarets to become champions of England 17 years previously.

But plenty had changed in the intervening years and there was only so much Potts could do, although he began with seven wins in the final 15 games of the 1976/77 season to steer Burnley clear of a second successive relegation.

"It was difficult," Brennan said of the return of Potts. "He came on board when the club was struggling and beforehand he was here and part of a massive success of which he was an integral part.

"His hands were tied when he came back with regards purchases and outgoings. It was a difficult time for everybody."

The previous success under Potts was now turning into a distant memory. Finishes of 11th and 13th in Division Two followed before the catastrophic 1979/80 campaign as the Clarets recorded just six league wins in 42 games and tumbled into Division Three for the first time in their history.

Brennan's last game for the club came towards the end of that campaign, an entirely forgettable goalless draw at home to Shrewsbury Town.

Having been offered a new deal Brennan was keen to make sure the ambitions of the club matched his own, but he didn't get the answers he expected from Bob Lord.

"I didn’t leave because I was chucked out. I asked Bob Lord for a meeting to discuss the ambitions of the club, because I had been offered a new contract." he remembers.

"I wanted to sign it but it was a case of wanting to know the club was on the way back, because I wanted to get back to the First Division and not be with a struggling Second Division club.

"I asked Bob what his ambitions were, if we were going to buy players and what positions we needed. The next thing I knew I was having to take option of freedom of contract."

Questioning the notoriously difficult Lord was a brave move by Brennan.

"He wasn’t one to reason with," he added. "I’d been there for 12 years and I think he’d spoken to me twice.

"That was once in the corridor when I was an apprentice and I was cleaning the corridor which was my Friday afternoon job, and then once when the first team were in the Great Western Royal Hotel in Paddington, in London, and I was in the lift and Bob got in the lift on the floor below. I said ‘hello Mr Lord’ and he just nodded, that was it.

"There were very few players he would ever speak too, maybe the ones who would bring in big money, such as Dobbo or Leighton James at that time.

"We didn’t appreciate what a bad situation the club was in at that time but in my eyes Bob Lord took them up there and he also took them down."

With his time at Turf Moor at an end Brennan moved to Bolton, but when he broke his leg for a second time and then saw George Mulhall replace Stan Anderson at Burnden Park he decided to call it a day at 28.

But that wasn't the end of his time in football and north east native Brennan continued to play non-league football in East Lancashire.

"I didn’t do anything for two years, I was fed up with having injuries and I’d felt better about the game," he said.

"Then I started playing for Burnley Belvedere as a friendly kick about on a Saturday afternoon.

"After a couple of seasons Colne Dynamoes wanted to sign me. It was through a friend of mine, Ken Riley, who ran Riley’s Engineering up in Colne.

"He said ‘come up and do some coaching for it’. Before I knew it I’d signed and I was playing and managing the second team. After a year I left, it wasn’t my cup of tea. I moved out of the game at that point."

While Brennan stopped playing the game he didn't stop loving it. He settled in Burnley, married a local girl and is now a season ticket holder at Turf Moor.

It wasn't love at first sight, with Brennan regularly returning home in his formative years at the club, but he is now a Claret through and through.

"I live up in Blacko now, we’ve been up here for 35 years," he said.

"I’d just signed as a junior pro, it was six or seven days after that when my dad died so I was going back from here to see my mum, and it wasn’t easy at the time living away from home.

"After the first couple of years when you get over the shock of moving away from home I loved the club, I married a Burnley girl and I’ve been here ever since."