I was there ~ When Burnley escaped relegation on the last day of the 1986-87 season, Peter Bateman thought he had witnessed one of football's romantic occasions. On reflection, he saw an awful game that nearly took a club out of existence

For 20 years I lived with the comforting illusion that I had seen what, in the circumstances, had been an excellent game of football at Turf Moor on May 9, 1987, with Burnley securing their League status with a well-deserved, if narrow, win. Then I saw the video.

Following Tranmere's win the night before, one of Burnley, Torquay or Lincoln would be the first club automatically relegated from the Football League. Burnley were odds-on favourites to go down. A First Division club only 11 years earlier, the Clarets were broke, the team was a demoralised rabble and the supporters were disillusioned to the extent that crowds had dropped below 2,000 at times that season. Burnley had to win and hope that one of the two other teams lost.

The night before the game, a group of friends and I decided in a Birmingham pub that we would go along to support the Clarets. A 10am the following morning we set off up the M6 in my battered Metro. There was a proverbial sea of claret and blue on the M6 but only, as it turned out, because relegated Aston Villa were bowing out of Division One at Old Trafford. Only after the M62 did we see significant numbers of Burnley supporters.

The supporters turned out in force that day. The pubs were crowded before the match, but the raucous singing barely masked the anxiety. People were buying programmes by the armful outside the ground. One particularly enterprising individual was making a killing selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words "John Bond is a bastard", as if his single season as manager had brought the club so low.

A crowd of 10,000 had been expected, but nearly twice as many turned up, causing a 20-minute delay to kick-off. They brought old scarves from happier days as lucky charms and carried table-top radios on shoulders to keep abreast of the scores elsewhere.

The news that the refereeing appointment had been changed at the last minute heightened the anxiety. Eddie Guy had been replaced by George Courtney, the country's top referee at the time. Clearly the League wanted to reduce to a minimum the possibility of Burnley being relegated because of a refereeing error. The implication was they had written the Clarets off.

The game kicked off at 3.20pm and Orient, who needed a win for a play-off place, poured forward. They had a header cleared off the line and rattled the crossbar with a shot before Burnley settled. A minute before half time, Neil Grewcock received the ball on the right wing. The defenders showed him inside and he hit a left-foot shot into the far corner.

With Torquay and Lincoln both losing, the mood began to brighten. Just after half time Ian Britton headed in a quickly taken free-kick and the party started. The celebrations were brief, as Alan Comfort, who had been a thorn in Burnley's side all afternoon, soon pulled a goal back. There followed half an hour of slow torture, which became all the worse when we discovered the other games had finished and results had gone Burnley's way.

Burnley had chances to make the game safe but somehow it wasn't in the script. The tension was raised a notch each time they failed to score. Towards the end of the game, someone turned up their radio and I heard the mellifluous voice of Peter Jones – this was Radio Two's live commentary game. I looked across to the moors and saw them dappled in the sunlight that was breaking through the cloud. If this was a sign from on high, it escaped most people in the ground.

It was after 5pm by the time Courtney ended our torment. The crowds streamed onto the pitch, where several players had collapsed in nervous exhaustion. Many supporters were in tears. "Not a bad game considering," we agreed. "Burnley played some decent stuff." Back in the King's Head pub on the outskirts of Birmingham my companions reckoned we had chosen a good day out, experienced history and seen a decent game.

That was my view for 20 years. Then I watched the video. The game was awful. Burnley's players seemed paralysed by fear, incapable of stringing two passes together. I could now see what I missed from my position behind a stanchion on the Long Side in 1987 – just how close Orient came to putting Burnley out of the League and, almost certainly, out of existence. 

How Burnley managed to win is a mystery. Games like this are best replayed in the head. Even in football you can only bear so much reality. Peter Bateman

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