I REMEMBER I was in New Zealand 20 years ago when the Leyton Orient match was played and I only found out the result in the early hours of the following day.

I was a first-year professional at Hull City and the season had finished.

They had an exchange programme set up with a team in New Zealand so I went over there and I was playing for a side called Porirua Viard United, which was 20 miles north of Wellington.

I might have been a Hull City player, but everybody knew I was a huge Burnley fan.

The trouble was, it wasn't like it is nowadays when you could ring home straight away whenever you wanted and chat away to friends and relatives.

I had to wait until the result came on the television to see if Burnley had stayed up.

It was a really nervous time and I was the only Clarets fan who was out there.

We got a round-up of the news from Britain every day and I remember seeing the television pictures from Turf Moor and the women in the crowd and all the supporters crying because they'd done it.

I was over the moon.

The last thing I wanted was for them to go out of the league.

I think that was the first time Burnley had been anywhere near the bottom, but that particular season, we were getting crowds as low as 2,000 for some games.

Things were looking very grim.

It was a massive game for Burnley and Orient, who were pushing for the play-offs.

We needed absolutely everything to go right for us on the day.

Thankfully, it did.

Looking back now, I think if we'd lost that game and gone out of the league, then we would have folded and we could have gone completely.

We would have found it massively difficult to come back from it.

The fact that we stayed up gave everyone at the club and in the town a huge boost.

Brian Miller, who sadly passed away recently, was the manager then and I remember seeing the relief in his face.

Across the other side of the world there was a similar expression on my face.