Aston Villa has been a great institution in the City of Birmingham. It is said that there was a time, in the old heavy industry days, when the productivity of Birmingham’s factories used to go up substantially on Mondays if there had been a Villa win over the week-end. And, in the old days, a Villa defeat was a rarity.
Until the First World War, Aston Villa was the most famous club in the country (and even in the world!) and until the Second World War the club managed to retain great respect in the footballing world.
Many of today’s top clubs (the likes of the Manchester clubs and the London clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, and Spurs) did not start to come to prominence until the twentieth century was under way. As far as the League is concerned, the London clubs did not start to make much headway until the 1930s.
I was born into this heritage not long before D-Day (June 6) in 1944, the year before the end of the Second World War. Though I was a few weeks old when Villa won the wartime League Cup (North). My grandfather had moved with his parents to Lozells (near Aston) in the early 1890s, and he therefore lived not far from the Villa’s first permanent home at Wellington Road, Perry Barr, and, also, the old Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel from whence the football club came. Thus he was around in the earliest of Villa’s main glory days, and he created a family tradition of support for the Villa that lasted over 120 years. It has been a great tradition, carried on by my father and his brothers and many other family members (a number of whom continued to live in Aston for many years).
The 60th anniversary of my initiation to the amphitheatre of Villa Park took place in 2010. At the age of six, in 1950, I was taken by my father to receive my baptism of fire. But to do this required a substantial trek on our part as we lived on the precise opposite side of Birmingham (some 15 kilometres from the ground) and the journey could only then be done by bus and tram.
Who the opponents were and what happened in the match on that occasion have passed me by completely though there were other aspects that I recall, including the old tram depot. We entered the Holte End terracing where was displayed a poster stating: “Beware of Pickpockets”. I can remember my tall father sitting me on his shoulders, providing me with an unrivalled view of the grand arena. From that vantage point before the kick-off I saw a man that came on to perform hand-stands in the centre of the pitch. Once he had completed that part of his act, he would walk on his hands down to the goal at our end of the ground to a grand cheer! Much later I learnt that this performer used to do this at every home match until about 1953 and that his ëactí was quite voluntary. Well, perhaps his act was helped by a glass or two of the other!
Before the kick-off my father decided that it would be dangerous for me to remain on his shoulders. In later years I found out why as when there was an exciting moment in a match the spectators would virtually roll down the terraces in a great wave, held back only by the intermittent crash barriers. When very large crowds were present this could be more dangerous.
Therefore, it was then a common occurrence for young children to be carried down to the front over the heads of the spectators, both for safety and so that they would have some chance of being able to view the match. So, my father arranged for the same course of action for me, but the sad thing was that having been thus conveyed, the advantages to a little one were nullified by the fact that I could still only just see over the top of the perimeter wall and through the railings surrounding the pitch! On top of that, the camber of the pitch almost prevented me seeing anything at the extremities of the pitch. I can just vaguely remember the baggy shorts that the players wore in those days.
The structure of Villa Park remained unchanged from 1940 until 1958, and was then only superficially changed until the mid-1960s; floodlights were first installed in 1958, for example. So the ground I visited in 1950 was laid out exactly the same for several years during the time from 1953 when I began to be a frequent visitor and supporter. In those days Villa Park accommodated standing room in the main, and attendances of 50,000 or 60,000 were common between 1945 and 1952, but the average attendance lessened after that. The huge Holte End (said to be the largest ‘kop’ in the country) was the last all-terrace section of the ground. It eventually becoming all-seater in 1994.
In September, 1956 I was treated to a seat (my first experience in a non-vertical spectator position) in the main Trinity Road stand that then had stood for over 30 years and was not replaced until 2001. The occasion was a match against Birmingham City; the ‘Blues’. The large old stand had floorboards, and when Villa were piling the pressure on their opponents, the fans in the stand would stamp their feet to make a tremendous din that augmented the famous Villa Park Roar that emanated from the terraces. And was there a roar when Stan Lynn “whammed” in one of his lethal shots!
In later years I remember queuing (and standing) all night for Cup tickets in queues that would stretch right down Trinity Road, around the Holte Hotel and down Witton Lane. And all night meant from 10 pm Saturday night until 10 am Sunday morning.
There were some grand occasions during my main early years at Villa Park (1956-1967), and some sad ones. There have been grander and equally sadder occasions since.
They were innocent years up until the early 1960s; rarely would there be more than a few policemen in the ground at match time and hooliganism was unknown. On the pitch, there was fiercesome competition between players at times, but nearly always the clashes were hard but fair; a shoulder charge was a proper shoulder charge, a tackle was a proper tackle. Stan Lynn could show today’s defenders a thing or two. To watch Lynn, Dugdale or Aldis was an education in the art of defence, and Alan Deakin, Aitken and ‘Slogger’ followed in that tradition. And in Nigel Sims and Colin Withers I was witness to two of the best ‘keepers that Villa have ever possessed. McParland, Hitchens and Woosnam weren’t bad either!
Rarely was anyone sent off by the referee. Quite often an opposition player would collect the ball to enable a goal-kick or free-kick to be taken by the Villa and the crowd would always applaud that. And they would regularly applaud good play and sportsmanship from the other side, too. And you stood a good chance of finding yourself seated to one of your favourites on the bus, in those days, though that sadly never happened to me. Even Frank jnr. and Amos Moss turned out to be second cousins of mine, but I never met them.
In 1976, I left for London, not to return to Brum until 2008, and my life in ‘the Smoke’ was so intense that I rarely had an opportunity to visit Villa Park (though I saw Villa play in London on a number of occasions). In fact, my next appearance at Villa Park was about 1988-time (when Graham Taylor mark one was in charge). My next visit after that was in 2005 when I experienced a real culture shock! Whereas the ground in 1988 was not too different to that I left in 1976, by 2005 it had changed completely. But, worse, the old atmosphere had gone. No longer was there the huge chorus of the Holte End terrace and 50,000+ crowds, and gone was the thumping of feet in the Trinity stand.
By 2005, football at Villa Park had become ‘sanitised’, it seemed. I have been struggling to accept its condition ever since.
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If you have enjoyed this contribution from John Lerwill, you can read the above and more in his latest book on Aston Villa entitled “Aston Villa – The First Superclub.”. It is available to buy direct from John’s site here – http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/astonvilla/superclub.htm.
You can also read a copy of Matt Turvey’s review of the book on AVL here – http://www.astonvillalife.com/aston-villa-blog/literally-everything-youll-ever-need-to-know-about-aston-villa.
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