ASTON VILLA AWAY PART TWO

Hopefully you would have read part one, or this will seem weird.

After the pre match shenanigans, as the match neared the end, we started to think, oh f**k, half of Birmingham want to kill the four of us after our five hours of pre match decorating and spreading the word of CCFC.

The final whistle went (can't remember the score) me the fifteen year old with my three fellow old heads of sixteen years ,thought we had a plan to escape, we'd do our matching parkas up to the neck, and stay away from all the other Cardiff fans and walk back on our own keep our heads down and blend in, yeh OK.

We came out of the ground and opposite was a quiet looking park, we went in and walked along the pathway and thought we'd had a result, when suddenly, and I kid you not,we seen what must have been two thousand or more skinheads heading over the brow of the park and straight towards us. They started to pick up speed and run in our direction, and f**k me was it scary, but we weren't the target and the few hundred Cardiff fans who were out of the park and being walked back to the City center were.

The few police that were around, must have seen this happen loads of times before and simply kept the couple of thousand Aston Villa skinheads and the four daft Cardiff fans well locked into the park. So there we were, trying to keep a low profile and surrounded by more shaved heads than an EDL march in Bradford.

Under my breath I was practicing my Brummie accent ready for the time one of them asked me what time it was (that's how we found out who the spies were in those days).

After what seemed like a lifetime we, along with our new skinhead friends were let out of the park and made our way up the road towards the New Street station for the longest three mile walk of my life.We thought we blended in quite nicely with our matching wranglers, parkas and coop daps (all accept for Needsy with his Doc Martens, more later).

Well we hadn't gone a few hundred yards when our first art work was discovered, Needsy, Gwyn, Workman and John Allan Aberdare Boot boys on tour, CCFC, Bluebirds. now this got a few of our new friends a bit narked, then the next wall two hundred yards further along with Valley Boys we are here and Villa are shit helped to wind the rest of them up into a murder frenzy.

Oh f**k, we new this was just the start and there must have been another forty or so adverts along the route back, but so far so good, we hadn't been sussed, then suddenly the biggest nastiest looking skinhead i had ever seen, walked over to Needsy who was wearing his brand new almost unique pair of sixteen hole blood red Doc Martens that couldn't have attracted more attention if they'd been covered in flashing lights.

"Oi Babs, where did you get them Docs from" but Needsy thinking on his feet (which had caused the problem in the first place) happened to see a bus gong past with Sutton Coalfield on the front, so quick as a flash, but in the worse fake brummie accent you could imagine, replied "SUTTTTTTTTTTTON COAAAAAAAALFIEELD" all that was missing was the word buttie to really convince him, NOT.

We were sussed, and our cover was blown, never mind, we'd done a mile, only two more to go.The big skinhead laughed, but some of the young Villa scallies were on to us, mind you we had a plan, Needsy had a chain in his pocket and out it came, I was thinking to myself, OK Phill, you hit the first one and whilst they are all distracted, I'l run the fastest two miles ever recorded to safety.

The scallies stepped back, and the old heads amongst the crowd just laughed, they said fair play lads your a game little bunch and set about protecting us and taking us under their wings, and thank f**k for that. Well every time we passed some more paint work we'd think "oh f**k, is this one to many and are our new friends going to stick with us, but it seemed the more they seen, the more they liked us, mind you I'm sure they didn't know we were the culprits, we looked to angelic.

After the longest walk of our lives, we could finally see the station, and all of the Cardiff fans who were now outside in a little mob, which was still ten time smaller than the mob we was stuck in, there was a bit of a stand off with Cardiff one side and us on the other side of the road that had a few coppers in the middle, and nowhere near enough to stop a ruck if it kicked off.

Anyway, we made the decision, even if were safer in our big mob of Villa skinheads, somehow we had to get across the road and join up with the City fans, as we did, we had some of the Villa fans rush at us working out who we were, and some of the City fans rush at us thinking we were brummies, talk about a rock and a hard place.

When suddenly out of the City crowd of City fans, a big welcoming face from Aberdare clocked us, John Drenthe to the rescue, a few years older than us but huge (well he seemed huge to me in them days, but I was a late developer).

(Getting side tracked now, but a few years later I went to his stag night and we just couldn't get him pissed, in desperation his best man did a collection, and we managed to get two pint glasses filled with every short you could dream of, he knocked them back and went on later to carry his best man home to bed, legend)

Back to Brum, we seen John and headed for him, feeling safe, but so did a few dozen big Villa skinheads, one of them shouted to John "we'll f*cking have you next year you big Cnut" I thought to myself "next year, that'll do me, coz I wont be coming back". Big John wasn't having any of this " f**k waiting till next year" he said" let's get it on now boys" well as much as we were glad to see John, he was now starting to piss us off,lol.

Luckily the Brum boys didn't take him up on his offer, and we pumped our chests out, and pretended we'd have been happy to back him up if it had kicked off. Well after shaking with fear for the first hour of the train journey home, by Abergavenny we started to relax and started to laugh at our days exploits. One hour earlier we were all saying "never again" an hour later we were saying "where's the next game" and planning our next trip. And that's pretty much how it was, a full on roller coaster of adrenaline.

Mad days, but part of growing up in the seventies.

excellend second part.. gwyn why cant you put your 70s stories into a book it would be diferent than the usual hooligan books out there because yours would have fun, trouble and wit cmon gwyn get the book out

mad place birmingham new street
i still hold the welsh all comers record for running up an escalator that was coming down

Very funny post! Why don't you and Frank do a book about the seventies? He has the same type of humour in his posts as well. It would make a cracking read!

Very funny post! Why don't you and Frank do a book about the seventies? He has the same type of humour in his posts as well. It would make a cracking read!

I am working on him, drop him a pm the more of us that do the more likely he is to do it, he got a great sense of humour and writing style, really hope he does it for history sake.

great stuff gwyn. have a word with annis about having a section of the board where all the old stories can be kept
mickey used to put some crackers on here