COLD BLOW LANE (away) 1967 to 1975 Did anyone (dare to) travel?

[gregavfc69/70]

I'd be fascinated to learn if anyone ever travelled away to Millwall during this period.....'67 to '75.
Matches were....14/10/67 W 2-1
                        4/4/69  W 1-0
                        6/9/69  D 2-2
                        23/4/73  D 1-1
                        1/9/73  D 1-1
                        1/4/75  W 3-1
A very good record, it has to be said. That final result was one of nine wins out of ten as Ron got us promoted but by then Millwall had a ferocious reputation,...so did many travel that night?
And on 1/9/73 ( I was sitting at home), I definitely recall shortly before the 3pm kick-off that the BBC Radio Birmingham (as it was then) match reporter clearly stating that ''hundreds of Villa fans were holed up at New Cross Station''.
Maybe he was also there around 2pm and he was able to break free of an assumed police cordon on the pretext that he was a media correspondent. God! It sounded pretty fearsome, pretty hair-raising to say the least.

[AV82EC]

There’s a chapter in the Villa Hoolies book called “Millwall, when it was Millwall” which recounts in some detail that day in 73 I think.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

I didn't go to the 1967 game which was notorious for their fans attacking referee Norman Burtenshaw who was stretchered off the pitch unconscious.
I was at the April 1969 game with my older brother standing up. I would have been just shy of 12 and it would have been the day before his 17th birthday. When I cheered the Villa goal some bloke gave my brother a bit of a kicking. Something he still reminds me about.
The 1975 night game I was in the relative safety of the seats and we were on a great run of results all the way back to division one. I do recall a couple of Villa lads coming through shitting themselves, i think they had been standing up and somehow escaped into the seats.
Don't really have much recollection of outside the ground. 1969 game we would have gone on the supporters coach and 1975 would have driven down in my Dads car. You never wore colours.

[steamer]

I am sure i posted before on our first away game back from Div 3
cant find it

[Crown Hill]

I think that one from 73 is covered in Eamon Dunphy’s Only a Game which was always a celebrated book. He takes great exception to Villa’s tactics and particularly to Trevor Hockey.

[dcdavecollett]

That wasn't the first game after promotion from the third division; it was the first away game of the 73-74 season. Jimmy Cumbes was hit by a missile from the crowd.

[algy]

My dad went to *one* of those games, not sure which off the top of my head. He’d said that they’d been walking from the railway station to the ground, saw this group of Millwall supporters who looked like trouble coming from behind and so darted in to a chip shop. Which was full of Millwall fans.

They’d asked my dad where he was from and what he was doing round there, he said he’d got a free weekend so decided to come to watch a football match. Him and his mate both had Cotswold accents, so after a bit of questioning they decided to befriend them and invite them in to the home end. They were both very quiet during the game, as you can probably imagine.

He said when Villa scored, the Millwall fans all ran down the pitch to attack the Villa supporters and there was just my dad, his mate, and a handful of old gits on the terrace. Millwall fans came back and the same group were asking why they hadn’t joined in the fighting. They kind of played up the country bumpkin element. Same thing happened again on Villa’s 2nd goal - terrace cleared and just them sticking out like a sore thumb. Made a very swift exit at the end of the game

He can tell that story better than me, obviously.

[trinityoap]

I can remember that before one of the 1969 games we went in a pub with no furniture. Apparently the landlord removed it from the  front bar on match days to stop his customers from throwing it at any passing away fans. In those days I could do a more than passable cockerney accent .

[Dick Edwards]

Fans of my generation will recall the name Pete The Greek, a notorious Villa hard man. There are many stories about him  - he allegedly head butted a police horse and thought nothing of charging into opposition fans alone. Another was when he fought an equally notorious Millwall hard man, on the terrace, one on one.