There are footballers who score goals and then there are goalscorers, those special players who have that knack of being in the right place to score on a very regular basis.

They are worth their weight in any side, they can turn defeats into draws and draws into wins on a regular basis and we had one such player in the 1960s who is undoubtedly the finest goalscorer I’ve ever seen in a Burnley shirt.

The name is Willie Irvine who, from 1963 to 1968, proved to be one of the finest goalscorers in English football in a career that was damaged and finally ended early because of a serious injury, but prior to that he was a player that gave Burnley fans an exciting time.

He arrived at Burnley from his native Northern Ireland in 1960 at the age of seventeen and was quickly into is stride. I was just becoming a Burnley fan and had my dad telling me about all the players in the first team but he always spoke about this young lad Irvine too, noting that he appeared to be scoring goals for fun in the junior teams as reported at the time in the Burnley Express.

“It looks like we’ve got a good on here,” he would tell me about a player who was scoring so many goals for the B team and then the A team. Of course, he hadn’t seen him play but just over a year after arriving, Burnley fans did get that opportunity when he made a reserve team debut against Barnsley.

That day he had a goal disallowed and missed a penalty, and taking penalties was something that didn’t come comfortably for him. It wasn’t to be a disappointing debut for him alongside Willie Morgan who was also making his reserve team debut. Burnley won and, despite the disallowed goal and the missed penalty, he announced his arrival with a hat trick.

Such was the strength and quality of the players available at the time, he couldn’t even win a regular place in the reserve team in that 1961/62 season when we won the Central League, but he stepped things up in the 1962/63 season and how. Becoming a regular reserve team player, he was scoring goal after goal. While Burnley fans wondered if he’d get a call to the first team, it was his country who first came calling and he made an international debut in February 1963 for the Northern Ireland under-23 team. Two months later he won a first full cap but was still waiting for a first team game at Burnley.

It came in the final away game of the season. Irvine travelled with the first team to Arsenal but wasn’t expected to play, he didn’t expect to play, but manager Harry Potts had opted not to build up the nerves and told him as late as possible. Burnley won 3-2 at Highbury and it was a goalscoring start for Irvine who scored the opening goal of the game. There was just one game remaining in the season at home against Birmingham. He retained his place and notched a hat trick as we brought the season to an end with a 3-1 win.

Supporters might have been excited about the prospect of Irvine in the team at the start of the 1963/64 season but not so much the management. He played in the first game at Ipswich but didn’t feature again until the final six games of the season when he came in for Jimmy Robson. He hadn’t scored at Ipswich but did find the net four times in the remaining six games.

Partnering Andy Lochhead, the next two and a half years were special ones for this phenomenal goalscorer. He scored 22 in 33 league games in the 1964/65 season, adding three more in the FA Cup. He surpassed that in the next season. This time he played every league game and scored 29 goals and he even added eight goals in seven cup games for good measure including a hat trick at Spurs in the FA Cup when we were beaten 4-3.

That total of 29 league goals set a new post war record for Burnley beating the 27 scored by Ray Pointer seven years earlier. The 28^th and record breaking goal came at Villa Park and resulted in a number of Burnley fans running onto the pitch to celebrate it. This was a long time ago and the police dealt with those daring Burnley fans promptly and appropriately. He scored in the next match in a 2-0 win against Liverpool but failed to score in the last three when we hoped he’d take the total past thirty.

His partnership with Andy Lochhead during these two seasons was incredible, Lochhead himself adding 36 goals to Irvine’s 51 in the league. The second of those seasons took us to third place in the league. We had as good a strike pair in the league apart from Jimmy Greaves and Alan Gilzean at Spurs.

Everything looked set and things continued just about at then same rate in the following season. By January of 1967, Irvine had already scored another thirteen goals in 23 games and Lochhead was ahead of him with 18. Then, disaster struck in the FA Cup replay at Everton when Irvine sustained a broken leg, the victim of a disgraceful challenge by Johnny Morrisey. He was out for the season and Lochhead didn’t score again in the remaining games. From looking set for another top finish, we had to settle for fourteenth place.

Willie was back for the 1967/68 season and, predictably, scored in his return game against Coventry on the opening day. He had a productive run in the League Cup, scoring five in five, but netted just six times in the league in nineteen appearances.

He wasn’t anything like the same player and coupled with that was his relationship with Jimmy Adamson which led to him asking for a transfer from the club he never wanted to leave. At the end of October that season he scored the last goal in a 2-2 draw at Southampton. It proved to be his last league goal for us and at the end of February, in a 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest, he played his last Burnley game.

He found his form again at Preston before moving on to Brighton in 1971, initially on loan. He was in the Brighton team promoted to the Second Division in 1972 that brought him an appearance against Burnley at the Goldstone Ground.

He’d done well for both of these clubs but left Brighton in December of the 1972/73 season and signed for Halifax where he played until the end of the season before calling time on his career at the age of just 29. He left Halifax having played back at Burnley in the John Angus testimonial against their wishes.

Irvine did get a Turf Moor return; alongside his former partner Lochhead he entertained corporate guests as host which included thoroughly enjoyable ground tours when he would almost humbly avoid discussions about his own contribution to our club.

It was only after his playing career had ended that I first got to know Willie Irvine but I became a victim of his professionalism on the occasion I played cricket against him. When I went into bat, he was at first slip. Did he invent sledging? I wouldn’t have minded that but he then took a blinding catch there to dismiss me before my innings had even got underway.

I’ve known him for a long, long time and I’ve had many a conversation with him about his goalscoring exploits and also about goalscorers in particular. On the subject of goalscorers, I know just how highly he rated Andy Payton who he felt might just have broken his record in 2000 before falling two short.

Willie was honoured by Burnley FC Supporters Groups in 2016, fifty years on after breaking the club post-war goalscoring record in one season and received their Special Achievement Award.

The record books will show that he scored 78 league goals for Burnley, a total that increases to 97 with cup goals. They came in just 126 (league) and 148 (total) appearances which is a superb return.

We have to remember that he was just 23 when he suffered that broken leg. You have to wonder just how many goals he would have scored for us had he not sustained that injury in January 1967. He would have smashed all club records I’m sure, although most likely we’d have sold him for a record, massive transfer fee and then had to see him scoring his goals for one of the country’s top clubs.

He’s remained a Claret to this day and still attends as many games as possible at Turf Moor, sitting now with his eldest son Darren.

I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone better than Willie Irvine – for me he is our greatest ever goalscorer.