FA Charity Shield 1981: Aston Villa 2 Spurs 2

It's the summer of 1981.

My beloved Aston Villa are League Champions. It's wonderful, fantastic!

But...

Being a dour Brummie, I can, of course, find a downside. Everyone says winning the league is more important and more of an achievement than winning the FA Cup, but with the cup you get the day out at Wembley and the moment of exhilaration when the winning goal goes in and when the captain holds the cup aloft.

It would have been fantastic if we'd won the League in our last home game versus Middlesbrough, but sadly it wasn't to be. For a while, the rumour had gone around the ground that we actually had clinched it that day, a rumour which even reached as far as Jimmy Rimmer but soon, word got out that we hadn't, leading to a terrible feeling of anti-climax, so when we were eventually crowned Champions, it was on the back of an away defeat at Highbury.

The Victoria Square civic reception is a great occasion and no mistake but my boyhood dreams are of lifting a cup aloft at Wembley, not on the Council House steps.

What I'm forgetting about of course is the FA Charity Shield.

I'll be honest, it's not really an event that I've paid much attention to in the past. The only one I can actually remember with anything approaching clarity is the clash between Leeds and Liverpool which saw Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan sent off and walking shirtless and snarling towards the Tunnel End.

It's a trip to Wembley though, a chance for all Villa fans to celebrate on mass from the terraces, and a chance to best the cocky Londoners, Chas 'n Dave 'n all.

Gotta be done.

We decide to go with the official Aston Travellers Club and we're by no means the only ones. The scale of the operation becomes clear as we descend on the Aston Villa Sports and Leisure Centre/Serpentine Car Park which has disappeared under a sea of charabancs. We eventually find ours, coach number 22, towards the Asda. My dad is way back on coach fifty something and I ponder whether coaches with that high a number will even make it out of the car park by kick off time, let alone London.

The journey down the M1 is fairly uneventful, though the road is a sea of claret and blue with scarves seemingly flailing from every other car window. No on-board toilet facilities to speak off so the coach convoy pulls into Toddington services and judging by the length of the queue, it must be the entire convoy. As one wag puts it “Two million on the dole and they all wanna go for a piss at the same time”.

Eventually the convoy snakes its way through the North London Saturday traffic and our coach parks almost in the shadow of the Twin Towers. It becomes clear that with the vast volume of traffic parking up behind us, there will be no tearing hurry to get back on board the coach post match. We'll be going nowhere fast.

As we sit on the steep stairway leading to our allotted turnstiles waiting for them to open (to ensure getting a prime spot on terraces), a group of around a hundred Spurs fans decide to mount an assault on our position. I can only think they are expecting the Villa contingent to run away, but the opposite happens and their faces turn as white as their shirts as hordes of angry Brummies hurtle towards them. They run away at an even faster pace than they had been charging forward and the angry Villa mob erupts into expletive filled song

Soon the gates are open and we position ourselves with the best view we can find. Wembley isn't an ideal place to watch football though. We're at the tunnel end, in the upper section section of terrace and even the goal at our end seems to be an entire football pitch away, thanks to the dog track and provision for Speedway (for which they dig up the wings of the pitch, wrecking it). It's not really about the view here though, it's about the atmosphere. I don't of course know at this stage that this will be my last ever time on Wembley terraces, but I'm savouring every moment anyway.

Tickets are divided between an upper and lower enclosure and it soon becomes clear that quite a lot of the lower people would much rather be with us in upper and the precious process of dragging people up by their arms gets into full swing.

As the players emerge from the tunnel, it's clear there's no Gary Shaw, which is disappointing, though Spurs are missing Garth Crooks with cartilage issues which sort of evens things up. The Crooks-Archibald partnership had rivalled that of Withe-Shaw in effectiveness so it's sad that neither is on display.

Despite Spurs goal scoring prowess and flair filled midfield, they hadn't challenged us for the title due to shakiness at the back and have signed up Liverpool's Ray Clemence to attempt to rectify the situation.

We kick off then and Ozzie “Tottingham” Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle are showing no signs of pre-season rust. We are certainly on the back foot as Tony Galvin and Ricky Villa provide outlets for Ardiles and Hoddle's industry, while Steve Archibald looks dangerous, put through twice by delightful (unless you're a Villa fan) Hoddle flicks.

Villa's answer to Ozzie's artistry is to flatten him with increasing regularity. No one is getting involved in the physicality of the game more than Peter Withe, seemingly at war with Roberts and Miller. A particularly graphic clash between him and Chris Hughton leads to both men going into referee A.W. Grey's book and this seems to calm things down slightly.

David Geddis is doing well in Shaw's absence, denied once by a characteristic charge to the edge of the area by Ray Clemence and then again thwarted, this time by the offside flag after putting a deft pass from Dennis Mortimer into the back of the net. Villa are getting closer though and by the time the Spurs keeper saves an Allan Evans shot from a Kenny Swain free kick, it's clear the

shot-stopper isn't getting the sort of protection he was afforded in his Anfield days.

On the half-hour, joy for Villa but complete embarrassment for keeper Ray. He comes out to claim a Tony Morley cross but the ball goes through his gloves like they are coated with Country Life. The ball lands at Peter Withe's feet and is dispatched into the roof of the net. One nil Villa.

The goal spurs Tottenham on and they regain their Mojo of the earlier exchanges. As half time approaches, neat work between Archibald and Ardiles ends with the ball at Mark Falco's feet, twenty yards out. He tries his luck and despite an athletic dive from Rimmer and it's in. One-one.

Falco, only playing as understudy to the stricken Crooks, is now brimming with confidence and keen to show he can do with his left foot what he can do with his right, he runs on the pass from Tony Galvin and shoots so powerfully that even though Rimmer gets a hand on it, it still goes in. Two-one Spurs.

Mark Falco and David Geddis

With Villa still reeling Falco has another rocket of an effort, rapidly becoming the player of the day, but this time he can't beat our Jimmy.

Things start to look grim for us as captain Dennis Mortimer is forced to limp off and it's down to our sole summer signing, Andy Blair, to fill the breech. Blair's hardly got his second wind when we are back on terms and again Ray Clemence is at the centre of things. Both David Geddis and Peter with have their eyes firmly fixed on a Tony Morley cross, David Geddis takes out Clemence with all the grace of Giant Haystacks and Peter Withe puts the ball into the back of net while the England keeper is still seeing stars and tweeting birds.

From that point, Villa look the team most likely to win, Clemence recovering enough to make saves from Cowans and Des Bremner and we go closest when he can only tip a Bremner drive onto the cross bar.

Gleen Hoddle eventually wakes from his second half slumber late on to set Archibald free but Rimmer is more than capable of dealing with his shot.

Suddenly, it's all over. Honours even. No penalty shoot-outs. The Shield will be shared, which is very nice and all that but not quite the victorious, glory filled end I'd been hoping for.

Still the European adventure is about to start, but before we get to that, there's that long coach journey home. Where are those sarnies me Mom made me?