My strongest memories of watching Villa are from the days my dad first took me to the ground. I was six, and everything seemed huge, and very strange. Firstly, how jumpy and excited my dad became the closer we got to the ground. He would start talking nineteen to the dozen, and begin long rambling sentences he never finished. Pointing things out: this is where a bomb fell in the war. This is the pub where your great uncle went in and challenged every Albion supporter in the place to a fight. This is the spot where your uncle Val swore he would never come down the Villa again.
We
would get closer to the Holte End and suddenly he would demand that I
look for a milk crate. This was baffling the first time. Why would you
need a milk crate at a football ground? Was it
full of empty milk bottles?
But it
only became clear once we pushed our way through the turnstiles - the
clacking was incredibly loud, and right next to my ear - and I realised I
was the smallest person in Villa park.
Everyone
in the crowd seemed huge. And suddenly in the space under the Holte,
the noise of them was deafening. Shouting, laughing, gossiping... and
swearing. Everybody seemed to be swearing non-stop,
including my dad, and they all smelled strongly of beer and cigarette
smoke.
If
we'd found a crate of some kind, I would perch on top of it and look
back at the crowd. it went back and back and back, it seemed an
impossibly large space full of an impossibly big number
of people. I had no idea you could get so many people in one place at
one time.
And
when the game started the noise that they made was just astonishing. In
an especially big crowd, you could feel the weight of people surging
against the crush barriers if Villa attacked the
goal. When we scored the ground seemed to vibrate and shake with the
noise of jumping feet.
But
the thing that sticks in my mind most clearly was the first visit I made
to the gents' toilet under the Holte. It wasn't a toilet in any way
that I recognised. It was a black, lightless hole
that stank unbelievably, full of men pissing up the walls, pissing on
the floor, pissing on themselves and each other.
Suddenly I
didn't need to go. And every time I came to Villa Park after that, I
would make sure I'd been to the toilet before I arrived. I never wanted
to see that toilet again.
Damon Green
Follow on Twitter @damongreenITV
Damon Green
Follow on Twitter @damongreenITV
Memory added on December 19, 2012
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