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?
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