tribute to Dave Miller

Now that the Christmas rush is over in our store I can write a little more.

This blog is my tribute to Dave Miller.

Dave and I emigrated within weeks of each other to Flin Flon in 1981, both of us said the same thing when we first arrived, “we can’t stay here, look at this place, as soon as our contract is up we’re away!” Thirty years later we are still here. Our arrival in Flin Flon was such a dramatic change to what we had been used to, he was from Manchester and I from Burnley. When a population of eight thousand gets a community city status in Manitoba, you begin to get the picture. Here we were, new residents living in the ‘city’ of Flin Flon. A city that has a population that equals the number of people that live in one housing estate in England.

“There are probably more people sitting in the Bob Lord stand than live here!” I told him.

“But who would sit there when they could watch city?” was Dave’s reply.



Dave Miller



So it began, Dave’s wife Marilyn is a devoted Manchester United fan, who would, and still does, dress in a red United shirt at every opportunity, Dave was a blue through and through. I am a Burnley fan, but in the early eighties there was no football on Canadian or US television, commentators laughed hysterically at any mention of ‘soccer’. So I adopted Manchester United as my second team, at least people had heard of the them, and Manchester, no-one had heard of Burnley, let alone Turf Moor. In normal British banter we would confuse our workmates with loud verbal attacks. Threatening to inflict terrible; deadly pain on each other once we knew the latest football results.

In the early eighties football was considered an ‘immigrant’ game in Canada. News and results were hard to get, the internet had not been dreamt of, short wave radio (remember that?) was unpredictable, with newspapers the only real source of sports news sent over by snail mail from friends and relatives. Now of course that has all changed with football being played everywhere by everyone. But in 1981 the receipt of a newspaper from England meant that we could turn to the back pages and look for the scores and league tables, and argue vociferously , great times! The Canadians we worked with were confused by our passion, and also confused by the immigrants from other countries who were just as bad in their French German and a variety of Slavic tongues.

 

the terrible two,
Malcolm Allison and joe Mercer



For those of you around at the time, Burnley were dropping like a stone through the leagues, City were specializing in mediocre results with their philandering manager Malcolm Allison, aided and abetted by Joe Mercer, who were more interested in results with women than results on the field. Manchester  United had just started to be a powerhouse, with the likes of Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and  George Best tearing up the score sheets like whirling dervishes. But I held my own in every ‘discussion’, Dave would pout, Marilyn would gloat and I would make excuses. Through the years City went down to the old second division, Marilyn reminded both of us that United were champions-again, and they both laughed at Burnley.

three United greats
Best, Charlton and Law

Last year was priceless when all three teams were in the premiership. Dave went to England for a holiday and kindly brought me back a couple of programmes, and a special edition of the daily mirror about Burnley. Such was our relationship, thirty years of threats, insults, respect and football.

On Christmas day Dave went out to walk his dog and shovel snow, during which he died of a massive heart attack. To my teenage soccer players he was ‘old’, he was sixty; (only a couple of years older than me), but to me he was not old at all. He was a big man, I have no doubt this contributed to his death, his liking of all things that were food and beer related was well known. Best described a friendly giant, with a grin and laugh to match. I will miss Dave, we did not speak as often lately, he gave up his dayshift job pipefitting and took an ‘easier’ job as a janitor in our high school, so he was working every evening, the exact time I am coaching. But we did meet up around town, and we would start again, City, United, Burnley, and the world cup was a mutual disaster for all of us. It was great to see other people looking and laughing at the group of us argue about football, only now they were joining in !  

Rest easy Dave, RIP.