IF Jimmy McIlroy had one wish in football, it would be to play the modern game.

“There are two things that I regret,” confessed the Burnley legend.

“That I never played on the surfaces that they have nowadays, and I never kicked the ball they play with because it’s so light and it bounces so high.

“By this time of the year we’d be playing in mud, on churned up pitches, and if you scored from outside the 18-yard box the goalkeeper would get a rollicking.

"Now they can hit them from 35 yards and it’s in the net before he can move! It flies like a bullet.”

But advancing years aren’t the only thing stopping McIlroy from living the dream.

For him, football has changed beyond all recognition.

“I don’t understand the game now,” said the former Northern Ireland international, who made 439 appearances in a 13-year career at Turf Moor, scoring 116 goals.

“That maybe sounds ridiculous, but you don’t see many players relaxed on the ball now; it’s so tight and tense.

“It’s a different game they play nowadays, and I don’t understand it because, for instance, when there’s a goal kick both teams all move down one side of the field, and the rest of it’s all empty.

“In my day the idea was that you used every inch of the ground, so you had somebody hugging the touchline on either side – not bunched up like they are now.

"But I can imagine if I talked like this to somebody in the game today, they’d say to me, ‘you’ve been out of it too long and you don't understand it now’, which is true.

"I don’t understand it. I would like someone to explain to me why, when a team gets a corner kick, all the players go down into the box.

“I keep thinking ‘if they kept three players up the field – one on either wing and one in the centre, they would keep three or more likely four defenders out, so that would open up the game’.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a thick ‘Paddy’ I’ll never understand it!”

Burnley fans of all eras prefer to class their adopted son as a living legend; the greatest ever Claret – which is another concept the modest 77-year-old struggles to comprehend.

Struggling to hide his emotions during a rapturous half-time Turf Moor reception on the night he received the Freedom of the Borough in December, one underlying thought prevailed.

“I was over the moon, and at the same time embarrassed because I’d have said that three quarters of the people in the ground that night had never seen me play, and they must only be going off what their fathers or their grandparents said about how I played,” he said.

“I can’t imagine, with the exception of maybe Tom Finney at Preston North End, any old player getting a reception like I got from people who’ve never seen me play.

“In a way it’s baffling, but at the same time it’s wonderful and makes me feel good.

“I think of the rest of my team-mates and what they think of all the fuss that’s being made about me, because I played with some superb footballers,” added McIlroy, who played alongside the likes of Jimmy Robson, John Connelly, Ray Pointer and Brian Pilkington in the 1960 championship winning side.

“I was lucky to be at this club when there were players of that calibre. I always feel that we should share the plaudits.

“I can’t believe the attention I get and the affection that’s shown, but it’s obviously the main reason why I never left Burnley, and never want to leave.”

But he admitted he had to research what being awarded the Freedom of the Borough would mean.

“I’d never heard of it before. I’d no idea what it was,” confessed McIlroy, who under the terms of the honour has the obscure right of herding sheep through the town.

“One Saturday afternoon about a quarter past two I’ll drive a herd of sheep through Burnley centre and cause havoc!” he joked.

“I don’t know about life changing but I’ve got thoughts now that I didn’t used to have.

"I always feel I’ve got to be on my best behaviour, wherever I go or whoever I’m seeing, because you don’t expect somebody with the Freedom to behave in a silly sort of way,” he added. “But still, I’m enjoying it.”

And, as a result, 2009 promises to be a busy year for McIlroy, who has been granted a testimonial by the Clarets.

“We haven’t fixed dates yet, but there’s going to be a couple of book launches in October. One is a biography and the other is a scrapbook.

"That’s something that I don’t think any athlete or player has ever turned into a book for the public, but I got the idea when I mentioned being paraded around the pitch and all these people I knew had never seen me play,” he said.

“I always felt guilty or embarrassed by that. And then it struck me one night.

"Unknown to me during my playing days, my father kept a scrapbook of me, and when I saw it I couldn’t believe it – he’d crammed so much into it.

“I thought that if I could just show them the scrapbook, they might say to themselves ‘well, he can’t have been a bad player afterall.

"And yet when I think about it now, I suppose it’s the most egotistical type of book you could produce. But it’s coming out in October, along with the biography.

“And I think it’s the sort of thing you can open any page and there are stories there, and lots of photographs.

“It triggered some nice memories going through it.

“I just hope the recession doesn’t hit it too hard!”