She did, indeed, wear a claret ribbon in the Merry Month of May. And she wore it for the Villa who were going to Rotterdam.
How did English clubs manage to obtain a monopoly on the trophy for so long? How could we take on and beat all-comers? Most intriguing of all, why didn’t anyone make much of a fuss about it? Granted, there was recession. hooliganism and other problems, but the match before the final was the Friday previous, against Swansea.
From memory the league champions, off to play in the European Cup final, got a home attendance of 18,000. It hadn’t been long before that when we were getting more than twice that number against Torquay Uited. We won the European Cup and nobody really cared. Then we got relegated, and nobody seemed very bothered about that either.
But these things aside, we were off to the European Cup final. Unofficial, ticketless and with all kinds of threats ringing in our ears from the government, police, UEFA, the club and my dad. Travel had cost £38 from Transalpino on Snow Hill and it probably wouldn’t cost much more than that to fly to Amsterdam now. We got the first train from New Street to Euston on Monday morning, then on to Harwich for the ferry. The boats on the North Sea crossing were huge, and some of them had been requisitioned for the Falklands war but ours was fine and we got into the Hook of Holland safe enough on Monday afternoon.
As you’d expect there was a lot of interest from the Dutch TV crews and one of them asked the daftest question I think I’ve heard even now. “Why are you heading for Amsterdam when the final is in Rotterdam?”
I was asking the same question myself (!) but tagged along with everyone else as the train headed towards the Dutch capital. It wasn’t long after we arrived that I realised this wasn’t going to be a trip like Anderlecht. There we’d managed to colonise major parts of Brussels without problem. Amsterdam, though, was a totally different experience. The Dam’s been cleaned up a lot now; it’s like Disney land for stag parties, with BrothelWorld and the Drug Park. Back in 1982 it was seriously heavy with moody-looking gangs of rastas and white lads looking like they meant business.
Three of us booked into a hotel then found ourselves in a British bar. Unfortunately, some wanker walked over to a young Dutch lad on a bike and smacked him in the face. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before the locals mobbed up and there were a few scuffles outside the bar. Knives were pulled, glasses thrown, the police arrived, dished out a few whacks with batons and we left.
Back to the hotel, and we thought we might as well have another try at experiencing the Amsterdam nightlife, but no sooner had we set foot on the pavement than there was another big gang standing outside the hotel next door. They were probably harmless but we didn’t fancy our chances so we went back and barricaded the door.
Next morning we were off to Rotterdam. Getting a room was a lot harder, but luckily I’d met somebody on the train I knew from the semi and he’d booked in advance so he let me leave my clothes in his place while I tried to find a bed for the night. No chance – after about four hours of walking round the city I finally realised that there wasn’t a single hotel room available but this lad (who naturally I’ve never seen since – if he’s reading this I owe him a few beers so get in touch) offered me his floor to doss down on.
Over the road from the station was another English bar so we passed the time of day drinking and talking to the locals. They were solidly behind us – one big skinhead said “The Germans will be arriving at eight in the morning. Will you come to the station with us to attack them?” He was a bit disappointed when nobody wanted to know. He’d probably been expecting us to be game for anything , but we’d read so much about what would happen if there was any trouble we were all frightened to so much as break a glass.
The night passed in a haze of reminiscences and there was still a sense of disbelief. So me of the older heads had been going when we were in the third division and here we were about to play for the highest honour in football. Then I remembered that I still didn’t have a ticket. So I walked up the road, went into a couple of bars close by and it took me about ten minutes to get a ticket at face value. It turned out to be in with the Germans, but no matter.
Next morning, and the Bayern supporters had arrived in force. I don’t know what happened at the station. but there were no reports of trouble. I guess our skinhead mate hadn’t got out of bed in time. The bar had upped their prices so the nearby supermarket was doing good trade. I struck lucky for the second time in a row when another old mate turned up. Him and his brother had booked a hotel in a small town on the way back to the Hook of Holland for that night so I arranged to go back with them.
There was a bit of an incident when a German oompah band came past and a few if our more excitable supporters moved towards them, but the police were straight over and sorted things out. After that there was nothing to do except jump the tram to the ground.
I got into the stand with most of the Villa fans. There were about 15,000 Bayern, 12,000 of us and the rest of the 33,000 crowd were neutrals in a ground that held 46,000. Look at film of the game and there’s a lot of empty seats – unimaginable now. There was an area of terrace underneath us and I could see our mate the skin enjoying himself with his new friends.
The match has been replayed over and over in everyone’s head and I still think we’re going to let a goal in at the end. But we didn’t and the end of the match saw Dennis going up to lift the European Cup. We were there, and she was wearing that ribbon.
The lads I’d arranged to meet were, miracle of miracles, at the right place for the right time, we jumped back on the train and I got booked in for what would be my first decent night’s sleep in almost a week. There might well have been mayhem on the streets of Amsterdam and Rotterdam but we celebrated the greatest night in the Villa’s history in a hotel bar somewhere I’ve forgotten the name of with a couple of beers and a discussion with some Dutch truck drivers about the Common Market.
The journey back was a bit of a rough one, with high seas and rain beating down on the boat. Looking at the state of most of our fellow passengers I was glad of the early night we’d had and the decent hotel I’d stayed in. There were no press waiting to meet us off the boat but the transport police were mob-handed and only too willing to push around a bunch of exhausted, hungover representatives of the best team in Europe.
25 years. Where does the time go?
Joe Wilkinson.
Heroes and Villains 