Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to...........

[The Laughing Policeman]

This thread is for memories of how you got to away games and the before and after the game jollities.
I'll kick it off with Blackpool 1975.
For some obscure reason our 'gang' decided to give the Travellers Club a miss for this one. And after a good Friday night out in the New St. area (this is before Broad St. was a twinkle in a property developers  eye) taking in The Costermonger, The Bierkeller, The Royal Mail and The Greyhound cider house up Lee Bank. We managed to assemble about ten of us at Digbeth Coach Station at about 5.30am on Saturday morning and very hung over we boarded the Coach for Blackpool. I think we arrived in Blackpool about 9.am so we wandered around the golden mile and called into a cafe for breakfast. By now the golden mile was beginning to come to life and we bumped into various other Villa Fans who were either making a weekend of it or had the same drunken idea as us and had set off very early from Brum.
We were wandering up and down the front waiting for the pubs to open when we came upon a silly hat stall (Kiss Me Quick and all that stuff) I spied a Claret Fez with a Sky Blue Tassel and decided that, that was the headgear any self respecting Villa fan should wear. So I purchased said fez  and proudly plonked it on my head. Pretty soon total strangers ( they weren't really strangers, just Villa fans we'd never met) were coming up to us in the street  and saying "We're gonna get promoted....Just Like That." In Tommy Cooper type voices.
Eventually the pubs opened and we found one on the front that looked ok, so we piled in and found it had a large back room which filled with Villa fans fairly rapidly. From memory I'd say it held a couple of hundred of us.
Anyway about midday two middle aged blokes turned up who were the lunchtime entertainment, one on the drums and the other keyboards and vocals. They started to play some old time stuff that none of us took any notice of until they struck up with "I do like to be beside the seaside" which obviously led to the audience singing the "proper " words to it. The poor unsuspecting duo then started on "My Old Man" which was sung with great gusto.
Fair play to the two blokes but what ever they played we had 'the proper version' to sing and the pair of them took it in good humour. This went on 'till about two o'clock and they decided to try and confuse us with "Ghost Riders In The Sky", the looks on their faces when the whole pub started on our version was priceless!
One of the lads grabbed my fez off my head and went round collecting for the pair of them and fair play to the fans it soon filled up and another hat was used too. We probably gave them more than they got paid for the gig.
Off we went to the match with a promise to return to the same pub after the final whistle.
Well we won of course and everyone was in good humour, so we repaired to the same pub and a jolly time was being had by all including the bar staff, until some knobheads decided it would be good fun to start smashing their empty glasses against the wall.......enter the police complete with dogs and the pub was emptied and closed.
Thankfully the 'aggro' didn't kick off until about half an hour before our coach was due to leave and we were able to get on board and sleep our way back home.

[dave.woodhall]

a jolly time was being had by all including the bar staff, until some knobheads decided it would be good fun to start smashing their empty glasses against the wall.......enter the police complete with dogs and the pub was emptied and closed.

If I had a quid for every time something like that's happened.

[olaftab]

Was this the match we won about 4-1 or 4-0. If so me and two of my mates were there. Drove up in a very old Ford Anglia. Rained all the way up. I lost my glasses in the crowd surge when we scored our first goal the rest is a hazy memory.

[DeKuip]

I remember we got the wrong Sunderland result through as we came out the ground and hordes of Villa fans ran straight to the beach and were splashing around in the sea celebrating promotion - until word got around that we'd been given the wrong score and would have to wait until Hillsborough in midweek to seal it.
That was as perfect an end of season as you could possibly dream of - won the League Cup at Wembley and won our last eight league games to win promotion, with huge away followings and plenty of goals. Finishing off by stuffing one of the other promoted teams Norwich 4-1 at their place.
Blackpool was brilliant fun and Hillsborough was an awesome night - right up there with Highbury 81 and Rotterdam for the emotion of the achievement.

[Gazza1982]

I was at the final Norwich game, hordes of Villa fans, wasn't it a midweek match and I'm sure Little scored at least one,.?

[Pat McMahon]

Aftab, 3-0 IIRC. And I remember the commentator on MOTD, Barry Davies from memory, saying that we had reached 100 goals in all competitions in that game.

Cracking story Laughing Policeman. Which words were you singing to "My old man"? I don't think I heard the current version until the late 80s.

[Handsworth Wood Villa]

"I do like to be beside the seaside" which obviously led to the audience singing the "proper " words to it. The poor unsuspecting duo then started on "My Old Man" which was sung with great gusto.

We used to sing the same songs 30 years ago?

[DeKuip]

We used to sing the same songs 30 years ago?

Yep, all the favourites...
"Sit down if you love Villa"
"Ooh is Paul McGrath"
"There's only no James Milner"
"John Carew, Carew, he's smaller than me and you"

[willywombat]

"I do like to be beside the seaside" which obviously led to the audience singing the "proper " words to it. The poor unsuspecting duo then started on "My Old Man" which was sung with great gusto.

We used to sing the same songs 30 years ago?

Yep, 40 years ago we had even more!

[cheltenhamlion]

We all got booted out of the pub over the way from Highfield Road once. The only time I can recall being shepherded out of a bar by a police horse.

[lennythekad]

I was at the final Norwich game, hordes of Villa fans, wasn't it a midweek match and I'm sure Little scored at least one,.?

We even took two specials to this IIRC, and the attendance always sticks in my mind, 35999. This was their biggest attendance for yonks, and I don't think they've ever beaten it since.

[The Laughing Policeman]

Another excellent day (maybe two) was when we went to Newcastle in Sept. 1976.
Okay so Malcolm MacDonald beat us 3-0. But this is about the day out and not the match.
There were about 25 of us in two mini buses and the journey to Newcastle was nothing out of the ordinary.
After the match we hung on in the ground for a bit and we got talking to a local police inspector who was convinced that he knew my face even though this was my first visit to his fair city. I was glad when we decided to leave as I was beginning to worry that I was going to be arrested for being someone else.
One of the guys had arranged through some sort of family connection, for us to stop at a Working Mens Club in Chester-Le Street.
We arrived about six thirty and were made very welcome by the regulars. Food in the way of sandwiches and other snacks were put on and the beer flowed freely.
We were enjoying ourselves so much that our departure time came and went ( we'll just have one more pint) a couple of times and we ended up having to watch "Super Mac" demolish us once again on MOTD, complete with the locals taking the piss, in a nice way.
I think we finally escaped about 11.30 and set off back down the A1 towards civilisation. We hadn't been on the road long before the beer started to try and escape from our bodies. So we stopped for a piss break and 3 or 4 people got out of our mini bus and slammed the door shut at which the driver set off again minus the people who had just got out. Some of us shouted at him to stop, and he did asking "what's wrong now" we explained that the poor guys had only just got out and he said he was really sorry but he thought they were getting back in when he heard the doors shut.
If the police had come along at that moment there's no way we would have been allowed to continue on our way home.
We finally got back to Brum at about 5.am on Sunday morning and every one agreed it was a shit match but the evening in the club was excellent.

[E I Adio]

My very first away match excluding local derbies was at Sheffield United in January 1965 and still remains memorable. It was the 3rd round of the FA cup and me and four mates (three of whom were baggies fans, one of which had a driving licence and a father who was daft enough to lend him his car) squeezed into an old banger of a Morris Minor and drove up to Sheffield. It took a few hours since there were no motorways, but we just about managed to get there for kick off.

We stood behind one of the goals with the rest of the Villa fans, not that there were too many, but enough to make ourselves heard - and hoarse, and to my surprise, that included my baggies mates. Don't remember too much of the game except that we won 2-0 and Tony Hateley scored. Can't remember who scored the other one. I do remember Ron Wylie clashing with one of their players. Ron was fouled and as he lay on the ground he was then kicked in the head by a Sheffied player called Keith Kettleborough, who was promptly sent off. Quite something as in those days as you practically had to kill someone just to get booked.

Bramall Lane was a very odd ground then, as there were stands only on three sides. On the fourth side was the cricket pitch. However, it was possible for us to walk all around the perimeter of the cricket pitch so that we could stand behind the other goal in the second half. Something else that's stuck with me is that when the police came out before half time to stand behind the goal, they brought with them little stools to sit on so they wouldn't get too tired. It was of course accompanied by chants of "lazy, lazy."

Don't remember anything of the drive home, which wasn't so surprising since we didn't leave until closing time.

[Damo70]

A few that spring to mind are ending up in Skegness after the Hull game in '87, six of us doing our bit for Anglo-French relations in a little bar in the middle of nowhere in France before Inter the first time. I've still got some St. Ettienne souvenirs a few of the locals went home to fetch, I wonder if the bar still has all the Villa scarves up? Also, a barmy beer bus to Man City just before Xmas '92 arranged by a relative of mine from The Bell in Marston Green where the driver was off his face by the time we left the pub in Manchester about midnight. Also, a car load of us going up to Old Trafford in fancy dress in the early nineties, getting to a pub on the outskirts of Manchester and finding out the game was off.