I recently wrote about the Bradford Fire in 1985 and the subsequent charity game featuring the late, great George Best.
Now, as you'll appreciate, that game took place over twenty eight years ago, so although the bulk of the piece came from memory, with such a long gap, I thought it well worth trawling my archives to check out the facts.
Dragging out the mid-eighties stuff, I came across two pieces of A4 paper that were in fact, the official programme of the 100th Birmingham County FA Senior Cup Final, a game which I attended.
This game was treated very much in the same way as a Central League Match and Bill Shorthouse's charges didn't play that well on the night, but did enough to claim the cup, so this is a perhaps forgotten piece of Villa achievement.
Though Dean Glover was reserve team captain, Dennis Mortimer - making one of his last ever appearances in a Villa shirt - was allowed to pick up the trophy.
Like the George Best match which would follow just a few days later, there seemed to be little to no information about this small piece of Aston Villa history on the web, so I've scanned in some pics, wrestled the villamad.co.uk Twitter account off the news minions and shone a light on it.
The trophy is actually very nice, far nicer than that thing the size of a coffee mug that they handed to Paul Merson when we "won the Intertoto"...but that's another story....
Those tweets are here. Enjoy.
Blast from the Past: "Programme" from the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup Final. Charged 15p for 2 sheets of A4 #avfc pic.twitter.com/1FaokCzPjA
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
Blast from the Past: Teams from the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup Final: #avfc pic.twitter.com/MzRaTTl82C
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
Blast from the Past: Dennis Mortimer accepts the 1985 Birmingham Senior Cup as #avfcbeat Wednesfield Social 3-1 pic.twitter.com/81JdTwpC6A
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
Blast from the Past: The Villa team celebrate winning the 100th Birmingham Senior Cup in 1985 #avfc pic.twitter.com/duDBzsfGN0
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
Although Bernie Gallacher was listed in the programme for the Senior Cup win, a Brian Little shot in a 5-a-side broke his wrist...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
...and Matthew Hellin played instead...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
For the record, Villa ran out 3-1 winners, Dean Glover, Ray Walker & Dennis Mortimer getting our goals. Dave Morrison scored for Wednesfield
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
Despite missing the final, Bernie -who had played in every other round - was still awarded a medal
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
It was the 19th time that Villa had won the Birmingham Senior Cup...
— villamad.co.uk (@villamadtweets) September 27, 2013
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