Why do you support us? That's another genuine question as i'm always curious why non Brummies choose Villa.
My great gran only went to one football match. She’d been asked by a gentleman friend if she’d like to go, she said yes. He said it might be busy, being in London. She told him that she’d been to Cirencester on market day so London would be no problem. The match in question was the 1923 FA Cup Final aka the white horse final - first game at Wembley, estimated 300,000 attendance. She was terrified the entire time, and refused to go to another game.
My grandad always said that if the only match he’d seen was West Ham vs Bolton, he’d refuse to go to football too.
Anyway, my grandad asked to go to watch a game, and my gran thinking that every game was like that said it was too dangerous and it’d be too crowded. This likely to be something like Swindon Town vs Rochdale or some such game.
She never owned a TV, and at least when I knew he she’d only have the radio on for an hour at most - basically she’d listen to the Archers and then the news headlines, to make sure war hadn’t broken out again. But she would let my grandad listen to the football results. This was the 1930/31 season, when Villa came 2nd and scored the record number of goals in a season, so he decided that Villa were the side for him. This was kind of cemented as there were coaches running up from the Cotswolds to see the Villa and to Spurs games. And I think Albion. But anyway, Villa were relatively easy to go and watch. Once he’d retired (was a farmer) he got a season ticket at the Villa and would go to every home game and all the FA Cup games, home or away.
I grew up in Lichfield, so Villa were the easiest team to go and watch anyway, though I’d have been a Villa fan regardless.
