Defender’s return after family crisis lifts Clarets
BEFORE the audacious heist came James Tarkowski’s secret mercy dash.
The night before a dramatic win which makes the Clarets favourites to cheat the hangman, defensive rock Tarkowski had left the team hotel and raced home to Manchester after a health scare involving his young daughter.
When she was given the all-clear overnight, Tarkowski made a last-minute dash through the Bank Holiday weekend traffic back to Hertfordshire to link up with his team-mates in the nick of time.At first, his rush back to the relegation front line seemed ill-fated after his early own goal.
And for three-quarters of a poor contest Burnley were as blunt as your rusty garden shears – until Jack Cork and Josh Brownhill’s goals in the last seven minutes sparked wild celebrations.
If rookie boss Mike Jackson can make it 13 points from five games against Aston Villa next weekend, it will be the greatest hit for the Jackson Five since the band were put together in Motown. Jackson said: “James had a problem on Friday night with his little girl. He had to go back up to Manchester, where he lives, because he was worried.
“Fortunately everything is fine and then he’s rung me up this morning saying, ‘I’m ready to go, I want to play.’
“A car picked him up, drove him straight down, put him on the bus at the hotel and straight on to the game. People don’t know what he’s gone through to play.
“That’s his character – what he’s done to get himself here ready to play.That typifies what he is, what sort of leader he is. For the lads to see him – they knew what had happened – all credit to him.”
Contrast Tarkowski’s devotion with Watford’s latest lack of purpose. Let’s not kick the Hornets when they are all but down, but after a top-flight record 11th consecutive home defeat a little constructive criticism is in order. Just when longsuffering fans thought their team had hit ground zero, they went lower.
Manager Roy Hodgson was unwell and spent the whole game in the dugout behind dark glasses, but he can’t escape the flak when half his team looked gassed in the last 20 minutes and he didn’t use a single substitute.
But for Burnley, an escape now looks likely.
Cork, whose first goal since 2018 sparked the late fightback, said: “We’ve got a bit of a cushion now, but it’s not a soft one. Everton and Leeds are two massive clubs who we can’t trust not to get results, so we’ve got to be right on it for the last few games.
“This is probably the closest in the last 10 years that I’ve been to relegation and although I’m used to it, when we got to Christmas
(with only one win), you think, ‘This is going to be tough.’We’ve managed to win games but the performances have probably been similar – it’s just that the goals are going in now.
“It’s difficult to say what’s made the difference because the previous manager was amazing and I can’t say a bad word about Sean Dyche.
“Maybe the change of voice, the shock of him losing his job and realising the situation we’re in, sort of changed everyone’s mood, because a few games ago it looked quite bleak.”
MIKE WALTERS