When I were a lad.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

As pretty much everything I can talk about these days is a memory, I thought I’d bore the shite out of you. N.B. I am not fit to clean John Russell’s boots.

My first season, 1963. I was 10. On my own. Admission to the Holte End was 1/6d (7.5p). I couldn’t afford the transfer to the Witton Road Stand (6d).

We play Arsenal, I had no idea who was in their team. We win.

Our strip was more or less the current West Ham kit. It’s my favourite.

There were no sponsors.

Shirts were numbered 2-11.

Goalkeeper wore green, no number.

Asking an adult who was who if the tannoy seemed to suggest multiple changes to the programme. In all honesty I didn’t have much of a clue who our players were at first. I wondered why Derek Dougan wasn’t playing.

All football boots were black.

Halftime was 10 minutes.

Spent mostly interpreting the score board through the programme.

Entertainment was provided by a marching band. 10 minutes seemed an eternity.

Our tactics seemed to be 2-3-5. The W formation.

There weren’t such a thing as substitutes.

If a player was injured he was positioned on the left touchline and instructed to make himself a nuisance. I when a player was hurt, a bloke with a bucket of cold water and a sponge ran on and did something cold and spongey. Who? If the player was suffering a broken leg he was excused. See: Spurs centre half Maurice Norman who, on suffering a compound broken leg, tried to stuff the shin sticking out of his sock back in.
 
I was informed that the bloke in the suit stood at the halfway line was our manager. What? Who?

Was there a “bench”? If there was, it was a wooden one.

I don’t recall players falling to the ground, clutching shin, beating the ground, holding his face, waving an arm. Except Alan Deakin and the Denis Law incident. It stayed that way until I saw Helmut Haller give a master class.

[JD]

Fantastic stuff.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

My first season was 1966. I was 9. With my Dad in the Witton Lane stand. Six rows back with the managers bench in front of the wall to our left.

We play Leeds United (who I soon find out are actually called Dirty Leeds). The only player I recognise is Jack Charlton, because I had seen him on TV helping us beat the Germans. We win 3-0.

Even though I was a little kid and crowds were not very big the underneath of the Witton stand always seemed cramped at half time. It stunk of Bovril but the air would also be full of smoke for you to breath in.

My only real memory of that first game is walking up Witton Lane after and my Dad saying "Did you enjoy that ? " to which I replied "Yes, can we go every week?". We did, and after going down to the 3rd division - coming all the way back up and winning the European Cup I can't recall a home game being missed.

About 3 games in, I started to know our players. It would always start Withers, Wright, Aitken unless Wright was out and replaced by Bradley - but there was also Deakin, Chatterley, Willie Anderson (our answer to Georgie Best), and Sleeuwenhoek which seemed a very strange name for a footballer back then. My favourite was Tony Hateley the centre forward who scored the goals. We promptly sold him to Liverpool for 100k  and replaced him with John Woodward for 30k who just as promptly got injured by WBA.

I soon obtained a rattle. This was white coloured but I painted the words Aston Villa on it. A was claret, S was a light blue colour, T was claret again etc. The word Villa got increasingly smaller as I had misjudged the amount of room I had.

Cup games (FA Cup and League Cup) were always more important than league games. We usually got about 2 or 3 of these games maximum in a season. I had a couple of normal sized rosettes for these, but when we went all the way to a final in 1971 I had a giant rosette about half  the size of me and a small replica cup with little claret and blue ribbons on it. 

Away games in Dads car would mean a woolen scarf draped out the window and one carefully draped across the back window clearly showing the words Aston Villa so nobody could mistake us for West Ham or Burnley. If the one out the window got dirty then Mum could soon wash it. The same could not be said for the modern lightweight silk scarfs that came on the market. A downpour while heading up towards Castle Donnington to get on the motorway for a game in Yorkshire would cause them to fray.

Players would arrive at homes games in their own cars a couple of hours before kick off in the car park so you could get autographs. I think I got Brian Tilers about 8 times. If you set off early enough for an away game you might see the Flights coach with the team on the motorway.

Dad always parked in the muddy old Serpentine. When it rained the puddles would be so big it would take twice as long to get to the car.

There was never a big rush to leave as we couldn't go home until picking up the Sports Argus which arrived at the newsagents at 5.45, about an hour and a bit after the final whistle.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that teams tied on points were ranked according to their Goal Average (I may have got this wrong, because I could never get my maths-deficient head around it, but you did some division and ended up with a meaningless fraction), not Goal Difference. I remember asking big people what the fuck the live average was at this moment.

Not the homoerotic section, honest: I was a big fan of Colin Withers, especially as he trotted towards the Holte End reeking of and frankly glistening with what seemed like he'd been bathing in liniment. 

[dave shelley]

Thanks for your memories ALITA, they evoked some great memories for me.  Not wishing to piss on your chips but, Hateley was sold to Chelsea before they in turn flogged him to Liverpool.

I don't believe a word Whiney says, he said he was a lad, he was born old!

[dcdavecollett]

When Shankly expressed an interest in signing Hateley, Docherty's response was: "A hundred thousand wouldn't buy him!!"

Shanks: "No, but I would. How much do you want?"

[Flamingo Lane]

Dad would never officially pay for a ticket for me,  he just told me to crawl under the turnstile, and then he'd pass the gate man the price of a pint of beer for his trouble.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Oh, and Referees weren’t household names, just Bastards in Black. And then came “The Butcher From Wolverhampton” or Jack Taylor, and several years later Clive Thomas.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Oh, and Referees weren’t household names, just Bastards in Black. And then came “The Butcher From Wolverhampton” or Jack Taylor, and several years later Clive Thomas.

Clive "The Book" Thomas will be 89 in end of this month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Thomas_(football)