Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Villa Memories => Topic started by: SoccerHQ on March 03, 2013, 07:57:09 PM
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03/03/03.
Christ what a horrible night that was. Not just the result but the whole atmosphere and it kicking off in most stands.
Were things worse then or now, it's difficult to say.
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10 years ago, blimey!
I got home from this one at around midnight, i'd been on the sauce from midday in Water Orton. Don't remember much about the game thank god.
Just remember horrible pent up fans milling around all day and night, i suppose i was one of them that night if i admit it.
That game made even normal people boil over!
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Most poisonous atmosphere I've ever known. I wonder if we'll ever experience anything like it again. I think it was due to a combination of a few things: the fact it was a night game and many people were bladdered, the fact we'd not played them at VP for so long, all the rumours of them having tickets in our sections, and ultimately what occurred on the pitch. A truly horrible night.
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Hadn't been a league match at VP between us for 16 years. What a horrible night that was in all ways. At the time I had a season ticket in Douglas Ellis upper, I knew it was going to be a very different night when the Villa fans were in full voice in the bars there before kick off. Never heard a chant up there before!
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Blues take the Savage derby
Dominic Fifield at Villa Park
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 March 2003 17.10 GMT
Somewhere amid the chaos, beneath the violent skirmishes in the stands, the flurry of red cards on the pitch and the purring menace of police helicopters hovering above, Birmingham won a football match here last night. This morning the repercussions of that win will be felt keenly across the Second City.
A first double in 26 years over their bitter rivals has hoisted Steve Bruce's side six points from the cut-off at the foot of the Premiership, sending the banks of blue in the Witton Road stand delirious on the whistle, but this was a ferocious blur of a match which will be remembered less for its football and more for its poison.
By the end Villa had been reduced to nine men with Robbie Savage, later substituted for his own good, confronted by a livid home fan who had eluded the numerous riot police stationed around the touchline.
Dion Dublin's head-butt on the Welsh international, within a foot of the referee Mark Halsey, and Joey Gudjonsson's horrific two-footed lunge on Matthew Upson 10 minutes from time prompted the dismissals and, justified as the cards were, they provoked ugly scenes among the supporters spilling out of the Doug Ellis Stand.
The Villa chairman, deadpan on the final whistle, endured vicious abuse from disgruntled home fans as they traipsed away in disgust. This was the first league derby in this arena since 1987; 16 years of rancour had duly erupted. Now Villa fans will have to cope with the aftermath. Dublin's late sliding challenge on Savage - the Welshman ever eager to collapse at the merest hint of contact - prompted a melee five minutes after the interval in which the forward, having wrestled himself away from Halsey, clearly head-butted Savage.
The pair have a history of bad blood dating from Savage's spell at Leicester City and they had clashed after a mere three seconds of this match to set the tone for the remainder. After the second-half spat the Welshman clutched his face; Dublin was promptly dismissed and trudged off down the tunnel mouthing "He's a cheat" to a TV camera.
With him effectively went the match. Just over 20 minutes later Jeff Kenna, wriggling away from Alan Wright on the right touchline, crossed and his centre eluded the substitute Geoff Horsfield and Olof Mellberg at the near post for the unmarked Stan Lazaridis to nod into the unguarded net. "He's beaten us in the cricket and now gone and scored a diving header," said Bruce, who substituted the Australian 10 seconds later. "Wonders will never cease."
Within three minutes that much became clear. Villa's goalkeeper Peter Enckelman had spent six months rebuilding his career after his unfathomable error in the St Andrews derby when he let Mellberg's innocuous throw graze his studs and trickle pathetically into the visitors' net to double City's lead. That memory is still liable to send Brummies flying into fits of either rage or giggles depending upon their allegiance, though now they have a choice of Enckelman clangers.
Jlloyd Samuel's header back should have been easily gathered but, as Horsfield bore down on the Finn, the goalkeeper visibly shirked the challenge and allowed the marauding forward to poke the ball free, round the keeper and stroke it into the net. Enckelman sank to his knees in dismay.
The goalscorer, not content with the humiliation already inflicted, later took over between the posts at the other end after Nico Vaesen strained knee ligaments in a fall, with City's three substitutions already spent.
What football did emerge from the tumult was utterly devoid of poise, with Gudjonsson's pummelled free-kick over the bar on the stroke of half-time Villa's only meaningful attempt. The Icelandic international had earlier been spat at by Christophe Dugarry who could well find himself in hot water today.
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My 8th birthday ;)
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Pints are on you tonight, then ;)
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Pints are on you tonight, then ;)
Already have been... made a few posts earlier that suggest I wasn't at my brightest.
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Horrible, horrible experience.
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For a few hours we became them, that about the most damning thing i can say about that night. Disgraceful evening.
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Horrible night, but I've never, ever, ever experienced a louder atmosphere at any game. Walking up the steps to my seat in the Holte was like a wall of noise.
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Horrible, horrible night. Nothing quite as gut wrenching as getting beat by them.
I remember explaining to some of my North East co-workers, just how vicious the Villa / sha derby was, and them not really believing me. Then after they watched both games on TV that season, the 03/03/03 game especially, I think they realised I wasn't exaggerating.
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What had Savage done to wind Dublin up so much?
Have they shared the sofa in the BBC studio since?
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****** Night!!
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I can't believe that was 10 years ago. Horrible evening.
I remember one of the national journos commenting on the fact that it was very unsavoury and poisonous, but by God it was interesting to see such passion in a fairly benign premier league ( I think he was basically saying he had loved the barely concealed hatred)
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Horrible night on and off the pitch. It was the only time I can remember us acting worse than them. I actually went with my wife that night and she will never forget it. She will also never go to the fixture again.
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I remember it being really eerie walking to the ground that night and it was almost like a scene out of Orwell's 1984 with noone out on the streets surrounding Villa Park and the police helicopters circling in the sky.
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It was like bottles replaced arrows with our own Agincourt on Witton Lane before the game.
Inside it was ugly and spiteful. The Blues fans daft enough to sit in our stands were severely dealt with.
How many times in the more modern era have you ever come across Villa fans fucking off out our stand, onto the track and into the away end?
Says it all really.
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Reading this has sent a shiver down my spine, I vividly remember a 'nose being sent tumbling down the steps of the Upper Witton Lane and getting a few kicks and thumps as he went past.
Games like this are always worth recalling when people claim to enjoy playing the rags, particularly if they use the word "banter".
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It was like bottles replaced arrows with our own Agincourt on Witton Lane before the game.
I never knew it was bad before the game. After the game Witton Lane was the worst I've ever seen it. Bricks and bottles being hurled at the police protecting the knuckledraggers. To their credit, the police did an incredible job closing off Witton Lane, if the Villa fans had broken through their lines it would have been a bloodbath.
The one word that sums up the night is evil.
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They trot towards the away end, stand behind police lines and some verbals ensue. And then, volley after volley of bottles like we had been practising every Saturday morning since the age of 8!
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I could tell a few from inside the ground as well but Percy's is the best account of the atmosphere that night as it covers a chap and his wife who rather stupidly sat in with our lot.
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Yeah about half 7 a whole train load of them got off at Witton and then continually chanted SOTV right up to the away end which announced their presence in more ways than one.
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If only this match had been played on 01/03/03. It wouldn't get dredged up every year as if it was some sort of significant anniversary.
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I was in the normally placid Trinity for this one. Unbelievable scenes.
Whisper it - and remove the violence - but I'd take an atmosphere like that over the sanitised shopping mall premier league "experience" every day of the week.
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everything was horrible about that night, me and my mate drove up and could not wait to get away after the game seething that we had been brought down to their pathetic levels.
UTV
The Doc
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I was in the normally placid Trinity for this one. Unbelievable scenes.
Whisper it - and remove the violence - but I'd take an atmosphere like that over the sanitised shopping mall premier league "experience" every day of the week.
You can't have one without the other, though. That atmosphere was fuelled by hatred, pure and simple.
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I was in the normally placid Trinity for this one. Unbelievable scenes.
Whisper it - and remove the violence - but I'd take an atmosphere like that over the sanitised shopping mall premier league "experience" every day of the week.
You can't have one without the other, though. That atmosphere was fuelled by hatred, pure and simple.
.....and booze, obviously.
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I was in the normally placid Trinity for this one. Unbelievable scenes.
Whisper it - and remove the violence - but I'd take an atmosphere like that over the sanitised shopping mall premier league "experience" every day of the week.
You can't have one without the other, though. That atmosphere was fuelled by hatred, pure and simple.
.....and booze, obviously.
I wouldn't say that had much to do with it.
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I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it's definitely a big one in my opinion.
I've been to derby games in the evening and on Sunday's at 12pm and there is a world of difference. Yes, you still get the hostility and those that want to fight will still fight, but the evening games always seem to have more of an edge - and an afternoon of drinking would seem to be the main contributing factor (given that you have to be pretty creative to get drunk by 12pm on a Sunday).
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That game could have been played anywhere, at any time, and the outcome would have been the same. There was 15 years of hatred and a lot of unwise words from that lot behind it. I honestly don't think drinking played any significant part in it.
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I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it's definitely a big one in my opinion.
I've been to derby games in the evening and on Sunday's at 12pm and there is a world of difference. Yes, you still get the hostility and those that want to fight will still fight, but the evening games always seem to have more of an edge - and an afternoon of drinking would seem to be the main contributing factor (given that you have to be pretty creative to get drunk by 12pm on a Sunday).
It's not creative to get drunk on a Sunday morning it just takes a lot of commitment. Agree about the evening game scenario though as the FA cup game against Manure 01/02 was full of booze fuelled madness.
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I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it's definitely a big one in my opinion.
I've been to derby games in the evening and on Sunday's at 12pm and there is a world of difference. Yes, you still get the hostility and those that want to fight will still fight, but the evening games always seem to have more of an edge - and an afternoon of drinking would seem to be the main contributing factor (given that you have to be pretty creative to get drunk by 12pm on a Sunday).
It's not creative to get drunk on a Sunday morning it just takes a lot of commitment.
Or finding one of the many pubs opening at 8am, especially so you could get drunk before kick off!
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A shift worker who drank in the pub I managed years ago had an encyclopedic knowledge of the licencing hours of Birmingham pubs. If he was finishing his shift around the time most people get up he used to drink around the markets in town where the hours were tailored accordingly.
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I always have to have a good drink before playing Small Heath, to calm the nerves more than anything else.
The day we beat them 3-1 (Cahill overhead), me and my then girlfriend went to visit her "down on his luck" family friend first thing that morning. Noticing my rather agitated state he thrust a can of Skol Super into my hand, telling me with a wide eyed stare that it would sort me out.
Good lord, I have never tasted anything like it in my life. I got a shocked reaction from the lads picking me up when they found me necking it and all told, from the black country to our parking spot near the King Edward, an hour outside that shop just up the road, to the turnstiles at the Holte where I left the empty can, I reckon it took me around two hours to finish it.
It was like alcoholic treacle.
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It was like alcoholic treacle.
I think everyone else learnt that lesson down the local park when they were 15 or 16.