HE WAS one of the best known faces at Turf Moor for over 30 years - but he never kicked a ball.

Jimmy Holland did pick up plenty of knocks though, after becoming club physio purely by luck.

Jimmy was living in Boston, Lincolnshire, when a chance meeting with Brian Miller at the Belvedere Calder Vale Club, set him thinking about a career change and set him on the road to 30 eventful years of uninterrupted Burnley FC employment.

Experience gained from serving in the army in places like Japan, Malaya, Ceylon and Korea held Jim in good stead and, above all else, toughened him up for the pranks and jests that lay ahead.

Above all, he was an excellent physio and all the lads knew that if they suffered a career threatening injury, they could not have been in safer hands.

Jimmy, however, wasn't immune to the odd accident himself, and suffered pretty much a catalogue of disasters during his reign.

Jim recalled: "We were playing a friendly match in Majorca at the end of one season and yours truly made a guest appearance and sustained a broken arm from my good friend Brian Miller when he booted me up the backside and I fell awkwardly.

"Then on the last night, I went out with Dave Blakey, who was the chief scout at that time, and we were walking back to the hotel when an overhanging branch smacked me in the eye.

"Going through passport control at Manchester Airport I had a sling over my arm, a patch covering my eye and Paul Fletcher had stuck a notice on my back saying 'This man is a smuggler!"

Another crazy incident happened in the quarter final of the 1983 League Cup down at Spurs, which the Clarets memorably won 4-1.

Jim had just attended to a player when he smashed into the glass covering the away dugout and needed several stitches.

Jim went on: "A pre-season trip to Norway was yet another eventful experience. After a game in Stavanger, we met up with their chairman Odd Tetlee, who had made his fortune painting oil rigs!

After saying our farewells I got into bed and felt something crawling up my leg. A young, lofty striker called Ray Hankin had bribed the chairman and chambermaid to put a live lobster in there!"

It wasn't only players Jim suffered at the hands of. I remember him being former manager Jimmy Adamson's cards partner travelling to away games and if he played the wrong card he would be brutally kicked under the table by the boss.

From then on, Jim regularly wore shin pads for the journeys!