THE title-clinching win at York City on Tuesday, April 28, 1992 has gone down in Clarets folklore as thousands of Burnley fans crossed the border to witness their side end a seven-year spell in the fourth tier in dramatic fashion.

It was an unforgettable night but what followed five days later had more than a hint of after the Lord Mayor’s show about it as Jimmy Mullen’s triumphant side returned to Turf Moor to be presented with their medals and lift the Division Four trophy, only to lose 2-1 to Wrexham in front of a crowd of more than 21,000.

But that day, when even a rare defeat couldn’t spoil the party, remains etched in Steve Davis’ memory as the central defender, then 23, ended his first season of regular first-team football with a medal.

Davis had moved to Turf Moor from Southampton at the beginning of the 1991/92 campaign, having enjoyed a loan spell with the club two years earlier.

“It was my first full season playing regular first-team football and to finish with a league championship winners medal was boyhood dreams stuff,” said the defender.

“I remember waiting for the medals and asking Jimmy Mullen ‘when are the medals coming’? I was desperate to have a look at them.

“They were the same medals the Football League champions were getting at the time so to have one of them in your hand was a fantastic feeling.

“The home game against Wrexham, we had 21,500 fans there. I think we got a bit distracted by everything.

“We got the trophy and the medals before the game, which wouldn’t happen now. I think in hindsight it should have been done afterwards.”

Despite Davis’ arrival, replacing his namesake who had moved to Barnsley, Burnley started the campaign slowly, leading to Frank Casper losing his job.

But the change sparked a reversal in the Clarets’ fortunes and they won their first nine league games under Mullen.

But Davis said he didn’t start to get the promotion bug until the final weeks of the season.

“When you’re winning games it makes everything so much easier. You’re going into games expecting to win rather than going into games hoping to win, and that confidence and momentum is massive,” said the man who went on to make just short of 400 appearances for Burnley.

“At that time we went out and played and happened to win games. It wasn’t until the latter part of the season that I can remember having all the fixtures of all the teams that were in the hunt for promotion written out and I was trying to go through it and see who might get points where.“I was trying to work out how it would all end up, but thankfully it all worked out well for us.”

The Clarets had missed out in the play-offs in 1991 as their exile in the bottom tier went into a seventh season.

When Davis first joined on loan his dad had brought him a book on the history of the club, and that had brought home to him just how important getting out of the Fourth Division was for Burnley.

“I was well aware of it,” he said. “With the book I had on Burnley’s history I was well aware of nearly going out of the league (in 1986/87). “Mark Monington was one of my best mates at the club and there’s a famous picture of a lady crying in the crowd on the day they survived and that was Mark’s digs lady.

"So I’d met her and I was aware of the history around it and the fact they’d just missed out on the play-offs in the previous season.”

It was a settled squad that sealed the deal in 1992 but several of the side talked of the importance of the central defensive partnership between Davis and captain John Pender, and the younger member of that duo is quick to pay tribute to the influence the older man had.

“It was superb,” Davis said of playing alongside the former Wolves ace. “He had a big influence on the way my career went. He’d played in the First Division with Wolves, he had good experience, he was a quiet man but a good leader on the pitch. He led by example.

“The partnership just clicked. He was the dominant one at the time, I was more the ball player. We struck up a good partnership on and off the pitch. I learnt a lot from him.

“I remember we were playing Scunthorpe and he was suspended and I thought ‘I’m going to have to step up to the plate here and be the dominant one’ and from that moment on I improved in the air.

“I realised I had to take the mantle on because he was captain, I had to make sure we didn’t let the team down when he wasn’t playing.”