Brian Green: my first match and my favourite players

 

I have been watching the Villa for over half their existence.This is my collection of Villa snapshots & memories

Age 8 going to Villa Park for a game for the first time. All my family are Villa fans but I am very proud that I went to my first game on my own. My brothers are quite a bit older than I am and they did not want a little kid with them. Waiting for the 44 bus from Greet to town. Behind the bus stop was a big area of bombed buildings which copped it the night they hit the BSA. It was a penny child’s ticket to Carrs Lane in the city centre.

The long queue of corporation buses in Dale End, all with “Villa Park” on the front and the back where the bus number would usually be. I remember crossing the road and joining the long line of Villa fans jumping on the buses. The queue reached from the Boy Scouts shop in Dale End right up to Martineau Street. It was a penny child’s ticket to Villa Park but the conductors were usually too busy trying to get the fans not to smoke on the lower deck that fares never got collected.

I used to get two bob pocket money so I had one shilling and ninepence by the time I got to the boys entrance to the Holte End. It was in Witton Lane by where the steps now are up to the concourse. Waiting in the queue with my shilling in my hand. The turnstile attendants used to try to get the boys to climb over the turnstile not go through it, that way they could pocket your shilling themselves.

What did the ground looked like inside? No covering for the Holte End of course, just steep concrete terraces and crush barriers. The famous old Trinity Road Stand on the left. It had wooden floors and they used to make a hell of a noise banging their feet on it. Over on the right, the corrugated iron roofed Witton Lane stand with the big Mitchells and Butlers advertisement painted on the front. They patched up the holes in the roof of the Witton Lane stand where it was damaged by war time bombing.

There was a turnstile down near the left hand corner flag where you could pay a tanner (6d) and swap ends. Just like these days we liked the Villa to attack the Holte End in the second half but if we lost the toss and attacked it in the first half we would spend a tanner and swap ends. If Harry Parkes, or Ivor Powell or Johnny Dixon won the toss we would not have to swap ends and we could spend our precious tanners on a programme and a cup of Bovril.

Talking of Bovril, there was the Bovril man with his tank of boiling water on his back. He used to walk around the edge of the crowd and the drinks would be passed over the heads of the fans at the front.

The Bovril man had another job at half time. He had to come out with a big pile of numbers and hang them by painted letters on the wall in front of the Witton Lane End. Your programme would tell you which letters represented which games and the home team the upper position and the away team the lower. In this fashion he would hang the numbers on the nails and you could work out the half time scores.

When there was a really big attendance at Villa Park, the little kids got passed over the heads of the crowd and were allowed to sit on the track round the pitch. It happened to me for the big post war Manchester United game and the even bigger Derby County game.

When Villa Park was really busy some Villa fans would climb up the OUTSIDE of the back of the Holte End. It must have been over a hundred foot climb up a sheer brick wall hanging on to the rainwater pipes, the fans who could not get into the ground perched in the trees in the park opposite. If you got high enough you could see the whole of the Holte End half of the pitch.

There were pigeons they would loose from the loft in the roof of the Trinity Road stand. The birds were trained to fly back to the Argus printers in Corporation Street with the goals and scorers names on messages. The Argus was very big in those days and they took a pride in having their early edition on sale with all the scores to the fans as they got off the buses in the city centre. Legend has it when we put eleven goals past Charlton Athletic the Argus ran out of pigeons and they only credited Villa with eight goals.

The Witton End looked very different, it was not a proper terrace but a giant heap of slag and ashes. When the ground was very full you had to scramble up the back of the mound and try to retain your footing on the top. The crowd below would push back and you would go rolling all the way back down to the bottom of the hill. There was a very odd kiosk they had on the top of the Witton End mound. It is the shape of an orange. They sold soft drinks from it.

Onto some of my boyhood heroes

Harry Parkes had a sports shop in Corporation Street and who went on to be a director of the club. He scored the very first Villa goal I ever saw against Huddersfield Town from the penalty spot in the 88th minute. Except I did not actually see it. It was a pea soup fog and we could not see past the half way line.

Stan Lynn better known to the wags as “Vera” after the famous war time singer. He had a cannonball shot and scored a hat trick of free kick goals against Bert Trautmann. They played him at centre forward the following week and he was useless. Finished up with the Blues but a great hero of the terraces nevertheless.

Ivor Powell our captain and right half a much capped Welsh international. He could throw the ball huge distances and that was the old leather ball which soaked up water and weighed a ton, not your modern lightweight plastic coated ones.

My all time favourite hero Peter McParland won us the FA cup and the best wide man header of the ball I ever saw. He could head the ball as well as Lofthouse or Lawton but he was a natural winger. Great player and great club servant.

Nigel Sims was our goalkeeper. 18 stone of muscle. He went up to nearer 20 stone when he got on a bit but those were the days when you could legally shoulder charge a keeper over his line and big goalies had to take a battering. I have two memories of Nigel. When we played Tottenham and they had a tearaway centre forward called Bobby Smith. Nigel caught the ball from a corner and was standing on his goal line. Smith thought he would try his luck and absolutely flew into Nigel shoulder to shoulder. Smith was laid out cold for several minutes. Nigel Sims also played as a centre forward! He got injured in the days before substitutes and rather than play with ten men, Nigel went up front. You may remember that he had a Villa shirt under his green goalie Jersey but it was a mass of holes and rips. It was the one and only time we ever got to see Nigel’s impressive physique!

Derek Dougan or The Doog as he came to be called. We got him from Blackburn as I recollect and he came with the nickname of Cheyenne because he had a shaved head which was very unusual in those days.Very intelligent and articulate man who did well in management and represented Ireland many times.

Another very intelligent Villa player was Phil Woosnam, who was instrumental in sowing the seeds of football in America. He was very far sighted in his plans and deserved greater success but he is yet another example of Villa leading where others eventually follow.

Danny Blanchflower was another player way ahead of his time. We got him from Barnsley but lost him to Tottenham where he became a megastar. He was the first football player I ever saw who could stop a ball, bring it under control and pass it in one movement. They can all do it these days but in the 50s it was exceptional technique.

That’s my favourite players covered but I have one or two general memories to mention still. The huge crowds which used to form on match days outside the Holte pub and the great big public urinals which were on the other side of Witton Lane beside what used to be the main entrance to Aston Park. Fans still drink their fair share of beer but it was much more boozy back in the day because most industrial workers still worked on Saturday morning and they would get on the ale straight from work.

The policemen on duty at Villa Park dressed in standard uniforms and helmets, none of the riot gear they wear these days and these were bobbies who controlled crowds of over 60,000 or more on big games at Villa Park. No helicopters, no paddy wagons, no motor bikes but they did have horses and they kept order very well indeed.

We have almost come to the end of my favourite Villa memories but I have saved my best one till last. A photo taken in the old Market Hall which stood in the Bull Ring but which was bombed in the war and lost its roof. The chairman and main shareholder of Villa was a fishmonger named Frederick Normansell and he had a stall in the market hall. The photo is of him with the striped apron behind the slab and there is a little woman wagging her finger at him, which is my Mom who was very fond of telling him what she thought about everything which went on at Villa Park. That was what it was like in those days.

I hope you have enjoyed my snapshot memories. I have lots more so we must do it again some time.

Brian Green

Memory added on December 21, 2012

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