Being as I am a committee member at Corsham Town FC, I don’t often get the chance to see the team that I started supporting before all others, the mighty Aston Villa. Therefore, when I heard that my beloved Villans had been drawn away to Bristol Rovers in the third round of the FA Cup this year, with Corsham playing away in the bustling metropolis of Radstock, it made sense to attend. I had last seen a ‘proper’ Aston Villa game fifteen years previously in 1997, when a friend of my uncle’s, who was involved with our sponsors at the time, AST Computer, provided myself and my dad with director’s box tickets at Villa Park to watch the Premier League game versus Leeds United. We had been hopeless that season so far losing our first five games, but a Dwight Yorke goal midway through the second half saw us secure our first win of the season. That evening, Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
I had also seen an Aston Villa ‘XI’ take on Oxford United at the Kassam Stadium in a friendly in the summer of 2009, but as the side that night was basically our youth team, I’m not sure it counts.
There were four of us going to the game, and a travel plan was hatched thus – I would travel to Bristol with Sam in the car, whilst James and Luke, keen to get themselves properly fed and watered before the game, would take the train to Bristol instead and arrive in the city a couple of hours before us. We had tickets for the Uplands Terrace, a section of which was reserved especially for the away supporters – but as our gang included two Aston Villa fans, one Bristol Rovers fan and a neutral, and we had the intention of staying together, the main Rovers part of the terracing it was. I would have to keep my celebrations to a minimum when (if) we scored. Earlier in the week, James, my Aston Villa oppo, had said that he thought we were the underdogs in this game – slightly extreme, perhaps, but enough to make me worry slightly that I could be present at the upset of the round, should things go wrong. Luckily, that happened up the road at Swindon instead.
I met Sam at the Texaco garage at the back of my house at twenty five minutes past three (a rule of thumb when going anywhere with Sam Perry – always add ten minutes on to any time he might tell you he will meet you) and, after a quick visit to the pumps, during which Sam, much to his embarrassment, was informed by a helpful lady in the queue in a very loud voice that he had left his filler cap open, we were away.
Conscious though that we were missing a vital relegation six pointer for Corsham at the Southfields ground in Radstock, I made several phone calls to our secretary Rich Taylor during the journey, but all to no avail. It would appear that we were being blanked for missing such an important match. In the end, we finally got a score out of Sam’s uncle Chris – Corsham would lose the game 1-0 through a goal scored in the first twenty seconds of the first half.
After admirably fighting our way Sam and I managed to find a parking spot in a side street about ten minutes walk away from the ground, and after a pause in the car to listen to Macclesfield take the lead in their cup tie against Bolton, we found ourselves following a group of men all the way to the game. One of whom was casually supping on a can of Special Brew. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a can of Special Brew being consumed anywhere other than outdoors. I’ve also been told that it’s like drinking treacle that tastes of vodka. However, as if to prove that Special Brew doesn’t necessarily mean you should judge a man by his cover, after he had finished his drink, he placed the empty can carefully in a recycling box that had been left outside a house that we passed. Anyway, I digress.
We arrived at the ground just in time to witness a minor scuffle break out between two Rovers fans queuing to get in. We had agreed to meet outside the turnstiles in order to distribute the tickets, and a quick phone call to James informed me that they were just getting into a taxi and that they would be with us in fifteen minutes. We passed the time by taking a quick look at the match day programme, and I was excited to discover that Howard Webb would be taking charge of the game. It meant at least that I would get to see a World Cup finalist in action this evening.
Half an hour later, our friends had still not made it to the ground, and another phone call uncovered the fact that they had in fact been stuck in traffic for the last twenty five minutes. With kick off only a matter of minutes away, Sam decided enough was enough, took his ticket and made his way into the ground, leaving me outside to meet them. He needn’t have bothered, as a few seconds later, I spotted my friends and we joined the throngs of late comers rushing to get in before the first whistle sounded.
As a consequence of this unfortunate hold up, by the time we managed to get into the ground itself, the Uplands Terrace, which was all on one level of footing, had filled to capacity and we were forced to stand around five rows from the front, which, as you can imagine, did not guarantee the best view. James and Luke decided to go and chance their arm elsewhere, while Sam and I stayed put. Indeed, things were so bad at the start of the game view-wise that I decided to visit the deserted pasty stand instead of trying to watch the action (three pounds well spent ) and text my girlfriend Rachel instead, whilst trying to follow what was going on at a football match I was actually at by checking the Aston Villa Twitter feed instead. The two wanderers soon returned, not having managed to find a better vantage point, and we struggled on for the rest of the half. We did, however, manage to stand on tiptoes just long enough to witness Marc Albrighton slot the ball through the legs of on-loan Rovers keeper Michael Poke after picking up a sumptuous through ball from Stan Petrov to make the score 1-0 to the Villa.
As the venerable Mr Webb sounded the half time whistle, we prepared ourselves for the inevitable rush of the Rovers fans leaving their spots on the terrace in order to go to the toilet, or get a pasty, or a beer, etc. As Rachel had advised me in a text whilst the first half was in progress, ‘Maybe if people go pee etc at half time you’ll be able to move forward a bit?’ Sound advice if ever I’d seen it. Except that, nobody went to pee. Or get a pasty. Or, indeed, go to pee and then get a pasty. Everyone stayed exactly where they were – they weren’t going to give up these spots easily, oh no! This led to another parting of the ways, and again Sam and I stuck together while James and Luke went off to try their luck in another part of the ground, with the promise to text me if they found a good spot. However, within minutes Sam and I managed to do just that ourselves – a matter of yards to our left stood the wheelchair enclosure, behind which nobody appeared to be standing. We moved ourselves to this spot and were afforded a great view of the pitch – better still than James and Luke, who we later found out were two rows from the front on the terracing below us and weren’t having much more luck there.
The second half started, and Sam and I quickly found ourselves surrounded by others who had had the same great idea as us. By now I had slipped easily into the charade of pretending to be a Rovers fan, applauding their substitutions and tutting at misplaced passes, whilst secretly wishing that the Villa would hurry up and score again to make the game a bit safer. For most of the period, standing behind me but a little off to the left was a lady in her mid forties who would choose the strangest moments to shout ‘COME ON YOU GAS’ directly into my left ear. With her was her father, who continually muttered ‘for fuck’s sake’ under his breath for the entire time he was standing within my earshot. This peculiar case of football Tourette’s increased once Gabby Agbonlahor, on for the ineffective Emile Heskey at half time, dispossessed the Pirate’s Cian Bolger (later voted man of the match, much to Sam’s disgust) in midfield and curved a shot home from the edge of the area for 2-0. Not once did I hear him offer a word of encouragement to his team – indeed, as the home team’s Eliot Richards came off to be replaced by Lee Brown with ten minutes to go, the gentleman turned to Sam (perhaps he had sensed that I was a Villa fan in disguise) and, talking across me, began to berate the withdrawn player for shaking hands with Villa left back Stephen Warnock as he left the pitch. Once Ciaran Clark had danced through the Rovers defence from midway inside their half and slotted Villa’s third goal past Poke, they decided enough was enough and headed for the exit.
However, they managed to miss a grandstand finish, with the veteran McGleish pouncing on a mistake by Dunne, who had been rock solid all evening, and chipping the ball exquisitely over the onrushing Villa goalkeeper Brad Guzan, currently enjoying a run in the side due to Shay Given’s ongoing injury problems. There was more to come, as three minutes of stoppage time was announced, Warnock handballed a cross in the area and Mr Webb had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. McGleish stepped up once again, but his poor penalty was easily saved by Guzan, and the Rovers comeback was over.
3-1 the final score was then, and a satisfying result. The best was yet to come, however, when on the way back to the car I saw a small boy with his father, walking in the opposite direction to us, wearing a home made Bristol Rovers hat – which was made out of an upturned large brown envelope with a picture of the club’s crest stuck to it with Sellotape. It was something I would have done as a child if I had been able to go to games regularly, and it made me smile on the inside. Making me smile on the outside though was reading out Sky Sports’ report on the match to Sam on the way home – Villa make ‘light work’ of Rovers and ‘stroll’ past them into the fourth round, or words to that effect. It could possibly be another fifteen years before I see another Aston Villa game, so I was happy with that.
Camilla must be sh1tting herself this weekend.