H&V 83 – January 2001.
Wimbledon, FA Cup replay, 1993.
I used to have a soft spot for Wimbledon. All that little club embarrassing the big boys and the rest of it. Great, I used to think. Anybody that shows up the pretentions of teams like Spurs and Chelsea are alright by me. Then came the night in question.
We were challenging for the title and playing some good football under the leadership of BFR. No, we were playing great football; it was a pleasure to watch. So a fourth round tie against Wimbledon was never going to be anything more than a sideshow on the way to glory. We drew the original match at home, 0-0 if I remember right, then ten days later I was offered the spare place in my mate’s car for the replay trip to Selhurst Park.
Neither of us had ever been there before, so we scoffed at the more experienced members of our task force when they suggested leaving at mid-day. No need, we thought. Couple of hours down the M1, hour round London. Hour for emergencies. We’ll leave at four. Luckily, sanity prevailed and we started off an hour earlier. It got us there more or less on time, but perhaps that was the least of our worries.
Down the M1, which was amazingly quiet, then just as we were expecting the M25 turnoff, the car the car remained stubbornly M1-fixed. I wondered what was going on, but what did I know?
Onto the North Circular, and did I tell you that the driver had never been to Selhurst before? Actually, he’d never been to London. But no problem, he had an A-Z so, armed with the knowledge that the capital city is no bigger than the West Midlands, therefore takes as much time to drive through, the next leg of our journey began.
You can get a very intimate knowledge of a ten yard stretch of wall when it takes an hour to travel its length. I’ll draw a veil over the next hour, but as least we got going a bit better. By now things were getting a bit fraught, with at least two of my companions offering to show the drive an alternative way and him threatening to turn right round and go home if they didn’t stop bloody moaning. At least we got to see some of London that I’d previously only seen on TV. There can’t be many football supporters who take in the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, twice, on the way to the match.
Then we got REALLY lost. Once we crossed the Thames for what proved to be the final time the map didn’t quite match up to the reality, so someone was volunteered to get out and ask directions. Being eager to please, and keen not to look naive in the presence of more experienced travellers, I got out in search of a friendly face.
Brixton is apparently a lot more upmarket now. In thirty stress-filled seconds during the early part of 1993 I was offered every drug that’s ever been on sale, several offers of a more intimate nature, three TV sets, a video recorder and directions to Selhurst on its welcoming streets.
Somehow, miraculously, we were headed in the right direction and off we headed on our merry way. The knowledge that we were approaching the vaguely right place helped concentrate our minds and we began to think that we might see some of the match. If on’y we’d known then what we were to learn before the night was through.
After a little bit more detour (someone claimed to have seen the sea, but that was ruled out as an exaggeration), we hit the mean streets of Norwood. In fact, we finally stumbled across the ground at fourteen minutes past eight. Luckily, parking is never a problem at Selhurst, so we only missed the first quarter of an hour. Which is what most other people in the ground missed as well. We hadn’t really noticed, as we were more concerned with eking out our rations and killing the pack horses for food, but there was seriously thick fog around. Watching was difficult, playing must have been just as hard.
As the ball drifted in and out of sight, talk was of how people had got there and how long it had taken. The record journey was five hours fifteen minutes, an admission which was met by gales of laughter as we described the journey. In fact, several people went to their mates so we could tell them how we’d got there. At least it livened up the match.
Speaking of which, 120 minutes produced as much as a normal Wimbledon game so it was down to penalties. After the kind of day we’d had, everyone knew what the result would be. I suggested nipping off early to beat the rush, but this idea was vetoed. If I remember , Neil Cox missed, as did Kevin Richardson. Perhaps Palace’s young starlet Gareth Southgate was taking notes for a dossier on how Villa captains should take penalties. We greeted the final blaze over the bar with a defiant chorus of “We’re gonna win the league,” without a trace of irony.
As it was an eight o’clock kick-off, and as it had gone on so long, it was almost eleven by the time we got back to the car. By now, all hopes of going back the way we came had been abandoned in favour of the bright idea of following the traffic. It was either that or shoot the driver.
I must admit, we had a decent journey back home. Or we would have if the man behind the steering wheel (I refuse to honour him with the title of driver) hadn’t had to ring home every fifteen minutes. Something to do with his wife being nervous in the house. Or, as I was told later, her being convinced that he was out playing away at something far more enjoyable than Wimbledon v Villa.
We stopped at the services on the M1, and who should be there but alleged comedian Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. I felt like asking him if he’d heard the one about the four lads who decided to drive from Birmingham to Selhurst in the rush hour straight through the middle of London but he would probably have said that the idea of a joke is that it doesn’t have to be so totally stupid that nobody would ever believe it happened.
Anyway, we all got home in one piece and I suppose that’s the main thing. And my mate never again drove to an away match. And last season, when Wimbledon got relegated on the last day, I danced.
Chris Martin
Heroes and Villains 