The first time I spoke to Dave Burnley last Thursday, he asked if we could meet at whatever pub was nearby WakeMed Soccer Park. I had to regrettably inform him there was no such establishment within walking distance.

When I pulled into the parking lot at WakeMed Soccer Park later that evening, I saw a gentleman wearing a claret-and-blue soccer jersey walking down the sidewalk and sipping from a 24-ounce can of beer.

“That’s got to be Dave,” I said to myself.

Sure enough, it was.

You think you’re a die-hard fan of whatever team you support?

Bollocks to that.

Dave, 54, is so devoted to Burnley Football Club that he legally changed his surname to Burnley in 1976. Dave is so devoted to Burnley that he named his daughter Clarette, after the team’s colors, claret and blue. Dave wanted to name her Clarette Anne Ballou, but her mother refused to give her the same name as a character from “The Jungle Book.” She also shot down Dave’s other choice, Burnley Burnley.

Dave is so devoted to Burnley that he hasn’t missed a Clarets’ match — home or away — since April 10, 1974. That streak includes last Thursday’s international friendly with the Cary RailHawks U-23 PDL team at WakeMed Soccer Park. Dave came to the Triangle and watched his beloved Clarets go down 2-1 in their first preseason match, and he planned to follow them to Blaine, Minn., where they were to take on the USL First Division’s Minnesota Thunder on Tuesday evening.

“No matter what it takes. No matter what happens, unless it’s a life and death situation, I will be there,” Dave said of his streak.

Dave became a fan of Burnley in 1964, when he was 11. In England, he said, people pick their teams based on the four ‘tions’ — location, relation, position or situation.

“Mine was purely by coincidence and it was just situation because I was put on the spot who to support,” he said. “And the team that was on top of the league was Liverpool. And my friends supported Liverpool. I’d seen a picture of Burnley’s chairman that day. He had a big bulbous face, like a pig’s head, Bob Lord. I said, ‘Oh, well I support Burnley.’”

He went to his first match two years later and saw the Clarets lose 2-1. But he loved everything about the experience — the team, its style of play, the crowd and the colors.

“You can’t name me two more resplendent colors you can match,” he said. “There’s nothing like claret and blue, nothing at all. In fact, [the RailHawks] should turn to claret and blue.”

Dave has held hundreds of jobs throughout the years. He’s been a toilet cleaner, a bank teller, an electrician and a steel worker. When he returns home after the preseason, which will also take him to Scotland and Northern Ireland, he has already lined up work as a bakery assistant at Mr. Kipling, a renowned cake making company in England. He doesn’t have trouble finding work because his employment record his spotless. He said he’s never been late for a shift.

“They know my psyche, which they’ve got to because they don’t have a choice,” Dave said.

Making his streak all the more impressive is that Dave doesn’t even live in Burnley, a city of about 80,000 located roughly 50 miles northeast of Liverpool. He lives in Stoke-on-Trent, more than 85 miles south of Burnley.

Dave doesn’t drive. For his trip to the U.S., he arrived at RDU airport with no means of transportation and no hotel reservation. His plan to get to Minnesota? Take a 23-hour bus trip to St. Louis. From there, if his credit card was denied when he tried to purchase another ticket, he said he would hitchhike the rest of the way, roughly 600 miles.

He got around the Triangle on foot, by bus and taxi. He called the available public transportation here “appalling.” He was so concerned that he might miss the match against the RailHawks that he took a taxi to WakeMed Soccer Park, “which is against my principles because I can’t afford a taxi. But I had to.” He arrived three hours before kickoff to discover there wasn’t a pub nearby. So he walked down East Chatham Street to a gas station, hung out for two hours and enjoyed a few tallboys.

He’s had two bouts of pneumonia from sleeping outside while following the team. He caught cholera in India. Throughout the “savage ’70s” and “evil ’80s” as he calls them, when hooliganism was rampant throughout England, physical altercations at away games were routine. He’s received and inflicted a number of beatings.

But nothing has kept him away.

Dave said it would be nice to have some luxury in his life, but Burnley has its grip on him and he on the Clarets. Asked to explain the devotion that few of us on this side of the Atlantic can possibly comprehend, he said: “At the end of the day, if you love something, no matter if it’s your car, or it’s your house, whether it’s your wife or girlfriend, if you truly, really love them, you will always do anything for them.”