33 Years ago today

[Dave Summers]

Aston Villa 3 - 0 West Bromwich Albion 10th December 1977

Mods, please feel free to move this if it isn't in the right section, but with tomorrow's match maybe relevant?.

Anyway the the memories, I can still hear the crack of Alex Cropley's leg when that dirty bastard Brown all but finished his career.  He was never the same player afterwards and it was a crying shame that such a talented player was literally cut off in his prime.   

I remember the chant of "Animals" reverberating around the stadium as they tried to kick us off the pitch.

Gidman and Gray put us 2 up before half time, I think Gray may have scored from the resultant free kick from the Cropley incident.  Have no idea who got the third though.

This was a time when we were both in the upper echelons of the First Division and the game meant a heck of a lot more than it appears to now.

Anyone else have memories of this particular Saturday afternoon?

[Villa'Zawg]

Aston Villa 3 - 0 West Bromwich Albion 10th December 1977

Mods, please feel free to move this if it isn't in the right section, but with tomorrow's match maybe relevant?.

Anyway the the memories, I can still hear the crack of Alex Cropley's leg when that dirty bastard Brown all but finished his career.  He was never the same player afterwards and it was a crying shame that such a talented player was literally cut off in his prime.   

I remember the chant of "Animals" reverberating around the stadium as they tried to kick us off the pitch.

Gidman and Gray put us 2 up before half time, I think Gray may have scored from the resultant free kick from the Cropley incident.  Have no idea who got the third though.

This was a time when we were both in the upper echelons of the First Division and the game meant a heck of a lot more than it appears to now.

Anyone else have memories of this particular Saturday afternoon?

"Animals" "Bastards"
"Animals" "Bastards"
"Animals" "Bastards"
"Animals" "Bastards" ...

[dave.woodhall]

Not relevant? You can put it in ten foot high flashing letters for me. 

[Dave Summers]

Not relevant? You can put it in ten foot high flashing letters for me. 

Yeah, thought you would enjoy this one Dave !!!!

One of my favourite games from my teenage years this.  Although bittersweet with the Cropley incident.  Can't remember another injury thay evoked such anger in all the years I have been going to the Villa

Oh for the same result tomorrow !!!!

[Lew Chatterleys Lover]

Strange - I seem to remember seeing the Cropley incident from the Smethwick End at the Hawthorns - must have got it mixed up.

Albion away was always a jolly affair. I remember it was so packed up there once a little kid near us was wedged between shoulders and saw the whole game from about 7ft high.

There was also the customary raiding party in the Brummie Rd End, which added to the hilarity of it all.

[DeKuip]

Remember it well - the animals.

Sid got the other goal.

We'd just got stuffed at Cloughie's Forest in the League Cup, when we were holders.

Cropley and Sid - now that's what you call a midfield.

[Villa'Zawg]

apologies for the long post...

The Guardian - Clicky

One of my indelible sporting memories is not a sight but a sound. I'm watching Aston Villa play West Bromwich Albion one grey day in 1977. The derby is always intense, but today there seems a kind of malevolence to the match, and to the crowd; you would n ot want to be out there. In the Villa midfield is a slight fi gure called Alex Cropley, a Scot who is in the form of his life. The previous season he had inspired Villa to a 5-1 win over Liverpool, the champions , and this afternoon he is making the Albion side - the team of John Wile and Len Cantello, one of the most uncompromising ever to take to a football field - look like park players.

There is nothing of Cropley, he is in that mould of footballer that is quick and wiry, playing in spaces, seeing gaps, but he is fearless, too, never stepping back from a challenge. The Villa fans have a favourite song, through which, in the company of my dad, I tend to mumble, though I appreciate the sentiment: ' Five-foot eight, not much weight, Alex Cropley's fucking great, la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.'

In my memory, I'm half-humming this and straining to see the pitch when a ball falls from the sky exactly between Cropley and an Albion player named Ally Brown , both running at full pace from opposite directions about 10 yards apart; an instant later Cropley meets the ball and Brown meets Cropley with all the force at his will, a force that seems to have built up steadily with each challenge in the match , and is looking for a way to escape. It is then I hear the sound, an other-worldly noise, easily loud enough to silence 35,000 people in a state of high excitement, like the gunshot that starts a race. This is not a start, though; it's an ending of sorts. It is the sound of Alex Cropley's breaking leg, a sharp crack that snaps tibia and fibula and leaves the lower portion of his shin skewed at a vicious angle to the upper part.

I can still hear it now, that crack that seemed to echo in an absolute chill quiet . I don't remember any of the goals of that game, or of that season, but I'll never forget that sound; it was the first moment in my life as a spectator, I suppose, when sport suddenly seemed like mortality. Major injuries always announce themselves immediately; teammates know the worst has happened, so do fans, so does the player. The suspension of disbelief that surrounds the match is punctured, the injury allows a different, messier register of understanding back into a stadium. What has seemed play, suddenly is real; where all before was speed and recklessness, now all is care and slowness.

Cropley, who was 26 , played a few times more, but not with any of his previous grace and pace; what had once looked wiry about him and his legs now looked as if it would easily snap. The more heartless Albion fans developed a chant about the incident : 'Alex, Alex Crippley.' Cropley drifted out of the game; he had played for Scotland twice ; he now drives taxis in Edinburgh.

...

Colorado is a long way from Villa Park. For all the modern tales of miraculous recovery, there are still some injuries that stay with a player for a lifetime. When I speak to Alex Cropley on the phone, I have the noise of his breaking leg again in my head. He is on his lunch break from driving his cab , grabbing a sandwich. He casts his mind back 30 years to his fateful moment. It sounds like it happened yesterday. 'It was 3.47,' he says, 'We were thinking about half time, waiting for the ref to blow. It's all still there in my head. I went for the ball and I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, I was looking to play it along the touchline. I got there first and just toe-ended it. He [Ally Brown] came in high and I felt the fibula snap first like a twig, then I felt the tibia go and that made a sound like a great branch breaking. I knew straight away, and I was holding my leg together, lying there watching Andy Gray run over and almost have Brown away over the advertising hoardings. It was almost funny, in a way, that part.'

To start with, Cropley thought he would be back, but he had a plaster up to his thigh for more than six months and when it came off he knew the leg would never be right : 'My knee had lost a lot of movement .' Even so, he spent the best part of a year living in hope. West Brom sent him a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne, as if he had got engaged. He never heard from Brown, though he bumped into him once in a restaurant. 'He seemed about to say something, but in the end he just walked off ,' Cropley recalls.

The midfielder eventually worked himself back into the fi st team but in his first game back, trying to prove himself, he went into a tackle and cracked a bone in his ankle . That was the end, bar a brief attempt at a lower-division comeback with Portsmouth. Villa gave him 'about £2,000' in insurance and let him keep his player's car. Without him, they won the League in 1981 and then the European Cup the following year. It's too long ago now for regrets, Cropley says, with an edge of bleakness. Anyway, he still watches football; his son, Jordan, is playing in Hibernian's youth team. Cropley's leg still troubles him; he played golf yesterday and this morning could hardly get himself in the cab. He laughs. Not sure what to say to end our call, I suggest that he was always a great player to watch, fearless, always seeing the angles. There's a long pause on the line. 'Aye,' he says eventually. 'It was not enough though, was it? It was all over way too soon.'

[DeKuip]

Wonder if Randy knows of this - it would be great to get Alex down for a game and and on the pitch, he really was a fantastic player for us in what I still consider to be our best ever team to watch (76-77 team).

Btw his son Jordan has since moved from Hibs to Berwick.

[ADVILLAFAN]

The deliberate ending of Cropley's career is one of the only reasons I have to dislike West Brom. I don't really mind them otherwise.

However. The referee for tomorrow is Mark Halsey. The same referee who at the Hawthorns a few years back didn't give a Mellberg header that was clearly over the line that would have put us 2-0 up and then gave them a ridiculous freekick which they equalised from.

He's the worst referee in football.

[Dave Summers]

Wonder if Randy knows of this - it would be great to get Alex down for a game and and on the pitch, he really was a fantastic player for us in what I still consider to be our best ever team to watch (76-77 team).

Btw his son Jordan has since moved from Hibs to Berwick.

This.

That 1976-77 was superb to watch with the Cropley, Cowans and Mortimer midfield the best it has ever been my privelige to watch.

Would love Cropley to come back down for a game, but I fear that there would be few of us left who really understood what he gave and brought to the Villa and it may turn out to be a damp squib.  Maybe best left with just the memories?

[dave.woodhall]

Wonder if Randy knows of this - it would be great to get Alex down for a game and and on the pitch, he really was a fantastic player for us in what I still consider to be our best ever team to watch (76-77 team).

Btw his son Jordan has since moved from Hibs to Berwick.

This.

That 1976-77 was superb to watch with the Cropley, Cowans and Mortimer midfield the best it has ever been my privelige to watch.

Would love Cropley to come back down for a game, but I fear that there would be few of us left who really understood what he gave and brought to the Villa and it may turn out to be a damp squib.  Maybe best left with just the memories?

Pedant alert. Sid only really came into the side towards the end of the season, when the rest of the team were knackered. You've missed out the archetypal Ron Saunders midfielder.

[Dave Summers]

Carrodus???

Another player that you didn't realise how good he was until he wasn't there.   

I seem to remember Cowans playing a fair bit when we won the League Cup the previous season, so hadn't he been playing for the best part of 12 months, all through 1977?

Mind, the memory ain't what it used to be, so I may have that wrong

[dave.woodhall]

Carrodus???

Another player that you didn't realise how good he was until he wasn't there.   

I seem to remember Cowans playing a fair bit when we won the League Cup the previous season, so hadn't he been playing for the best part of 12 months, all through 1977?

Mind, the memory ain't what it used to be, so I may have that wrong

From memory, Cowans had gradually been coming into the side, although he only got in regularly after Carrodus got injured just before the second replay. Appearances in 1976-77 were Mortimer 54, Carrodus 43, Cropley 41, Cowans 21 (plus 5 sub). There was one ever-present (56 games) and amazingly it was Brian Little.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

The deliberate ending of Cropley's career is one of the only reasons I have to dislike West Brom. I don't really mind them otherwise.

Same here. It's easy to forget just how good Cropley was. He had to be one of Saunders' best signings. He had it all, skill, passion, aggression, vision, he really was the complete midfielder. As others have mentioned, I'd love to see him back at Villa Park.

As for the game against them 33 years ago, even though we stuffed them, my only real memory of that game is Alex being stretched off. I can still see it now. Bastards!

[peter w]

Carrodus???

Another player that you didn't realise how good he was until he wasn't there.   

I seem to remember Cowans playing a fair bit when we won the League Cup the previous season, so hadn't he been playing for the best part of 12 months, all through 1977?

Mind, the memory ain't what it used to be, so I may have that wrong

Although I was young and a fan at the time, looking back at his games I find him a little bit lightweight.