The 1982 European Cup Final
Dennis Mortimer lifts the European Cup. I was about 30 yards away, to Dennis’s left
Credit: Popperfoto via Getty Images
During the late 70s and early 80s I was a member at North Birmingham Squash Rackets, which was sort of on the corner of Chester Road and Gravelly Lane/Boldmere Road. I also used to occasionally play at Sutton Hard Courts which is on Highbridge Road in Sutton Coldfield.
Both clubs were frequented by Aston Villa players, some would play squash, others would come along just for a drink in the bar and some banter with their team mates.
Chris Nicholl
Chris Nicholl was one of my regular squash opponents and we got along very well, he had a great sense of humour and was always good company. I remember three incidents in particular – one Saturday evening he turned up at the club covered in cuts and bruises around the face after a game against Manchester United. We had a brief chat:
“Christ Chris! What happened to you, mate?”
“Stuart fucking Pearson, that’s what happened to me. Elbows everywhere, built like a brick shithouse. A proper hard case. It’s just the way things are at Old Trafford – you’ll get punched when the referee’s not looking, your shirt will be pulled, you’ll get your ankles tapped. Unless someone actually pulls a knife on you, you’ve got no chance of getting a free kick”
Another time, he’d recently played for Northern Ireland against Scotland at Hampden Park:
“It’s a nuthouse. You’ve got one end of the ground singing Catholic Hymns, the other end singing Protestant Hymns and you can smell the whisky on the breath of the fans even when your 30 yards away on the pitch”
He once scored a thunderbolt goal from 40 yards out against Everton in a League Cup Final replay. I asked him if he knew it was going in as soon as he’d hit it:
“Of course not. I had my eyes shut at the time, I had no idea where it was going”
All this would have been in the late 1970s when Liverpool were in all their pomp. He once told me what a hightmare it was captaining Villa at Anfield when Liverpool would inevitably be pouring the pressure on at the Kop end in the last 15 minutes, they always liked to finish the game on a high. Chris said the noise coming from behind the goal would be absolutely deafening and it was well-nigh impossible for him to organise his defence – nobody could hear what he was shouting out.
Apart from Chris, other regulars at the squash club would include Peter Withe (who was quite a good squash player), Dennis Mortimer, Allan Evans, Des Bremner, Tony Morley and Colin Gibson. Andy Gray used to come along as well, but I wlways got the feeling that the other players didn’t like him much; he would sometimes cut a bit of a lonely figure, on the fringe of things, although nevertheless he still used to come to the club with them, even after he’d left Villa and joined Wolves.
Long after Andy Gray and Chris Nicholl had left the club, Villa won the league title. By now, I was living in London, but would still visit the squash club when I was back in Birmingham and mix with the Villa players of the time. They were an incredibly tight-knit bunch, assembled by Ron Saunders, who they idolised. They told me a story about winning the league:
Saunders the Hard Man
Liverpool were having a very rare poor league season by their standards, although they still won the European Cup(!) but had left the door open for Ipswich and Villa to sneak in and battle it out for the title. There was a crunch match at Villa Park between the two sides four or five games before the end of the season. Ipswich won. The Villa players were devastated, it looked as if their chances of winning the League had gone. As they sat slumped in the dressing room, they could hear the Ipswich players singing and celebrating in their own dressing room down the corridor. Saunders came in, propped the dressing room door open and said:
“Right. Nobody speaks. Get changed and showered in total silence. Listen to the noise coming down that corridor. That’s the sound of a team losing the league. They think they’ve won it, but there’s still plenty of tough games to go. They’ll switch off now and think they can cruise it, but you’ve got something they’ll never have – you’ve got mental toughness. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing all season and you’ll get past them, They’re good players, but mentally soft”.
He was right. Ipswich ran into serious fixture congestion issues with a small squad and Villa passed them, winning the title despite losing the final game of the season.
Ron Saunders (c) Media Storehouse.
The Villa players used to joke about him taking any excuse to show off his physique.
English clubs had won the European Cup for the previous five years running, so not unnaturally my Villa mates fancied themselves to make it six in a row. Then, halfway though the next season, the club was hit with a bombshell when, out of the blue, Saunders resigned, with Villa progressing very well in the competition. It was some kind of contract and control dispute with the club’s chairman Ron Bendall, who,, so the players told me, had been forcing issues with Saunders in the mistaken belief that Saunders wouldn’t walk away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win the European Cup. He underestimated what a strong-minded character Saunders was.
Saunders was replaced by Tony Barton, his assistant manager. The players liked Barton a lot, but never seemed to regard him as a ‘proper’ manager. Barton had the common sense to adopt an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach – Saunders’ team was pretty much managing itself, the changing room environment was strong and healthy, so he kept changes to the absolute minimum.
Villa battled their way through to the Final. I’m a Birmingham City fan – it’s a miserable existence, but character-building. The Villa players knew I was a Blues fan, but didn’t care much, professional players are just doing a job, with none of the allegiances that supporters have. In addition, there were several links between the two clubs – Peter Withe had played for Blues and, by the time Villa got to the European Cup Final, Ron Saunders was managing Birmingham. Despite my allegiances with ‘the enemy’, I wanted to go to the Final, if only to see my drinking buddies lift the European Cup, this is not something you get to see every day. I was given a couple of tickets in the executive area.
The game was to be played in Rotterdam, at a stadium I was familiar with – Feyenoord’s ground. A couple of years earlier, I’d worked in Rotterdam, and used to go to watch Feyenoord. I went to the game with my Dutch friend from Cincinnati Milacron, Leo Pieters.
I booked myself into the Hilton and found the hotel to be full of UEFA officials. Not an impressive group of people, they seemed like a bunch of freeloaders, drifting from event to event.
The Big Day Comes
Villa versus Bayern Munich. Leo and I settled into our seats in the main stand. Leo wasn’t particularly interested in football, but was proud to see such a prestigious game in his home town. We noticed during the warm-up, that Bayern’s influential midfielder Paul Breitner was holding his back and stretching a lot. It soon became apparent that my drinking buddy and no-nonsense Scouser, Dennis Mortimer had also noticed Breitner’s discomfort – he hit him early in the game with a crunching, jarring tackle which seemed to hamper Breitner’s further influence on the game.
It wasn’t much of a spectacle, to be honest, it was quite a dull match to watch, but eventually Villa grabbed a goal, which looked from where I was sitting as if it had gone in off the shin of a squash club regular, Peter Withe. In fact, he’d mishit it slightly and very nearly put it wide from the centre of the goal, it went in off the post. I was delighted for Peter.
Late in the game, it looked like Bayern had equalised, but the referee disallowed the goal for something. We were sitting in an area with loads of Germans behind us – their wild celebrations were abruptly cut short by the ref’s decision and they sank back into their seats, subdued and silent. As I mentioned earlier, Leo Pieters was not a big football fan, but he thoroughly enjoyed the last few minutes, sitting sideways on his seat, smoking cigarettes and looking back on a sea of dejected German faces, muttering “Marvellous, marvellous”. The animosity between the Dutch and Germans goes back a long way.
The Villa Fans
A special word for the Villa fans. After the game, they embarked on a huge celebratory conga up and down the terrace away to our right. It was quite a sight to behold. We came out the stadium and began making our way to the railway station. Some German biker gangs had made their way to Rotterdam, with no intention of going to the game, only being there to cause trouble outside. I saw a biker hit a Villa fan across the face with a chain, tearing the skin. If this had been my club, Birmingham, utter carnage would have ensued, but to his eternal credit, the Villa fan just said “don’t be stupid, our kid” and walked away peacefully with his mates, mopping the blood up with his scarf.
We got on the train back to town and found ourselves sitting in a carriage with Brian Clough. The Villa fans were mystified why he’d be on the train when there was a fleet of limousines ferrying dignitaries like him away from the stadium. Cloughie just said “I avoid those tossers and parasites like the plague”. It’s no surprise that he never got the job of England manager.
The fans started to tease Cloughie – he’d sold matchwinner Peter Withe a couple of years earlier. He took it all in a very good-natured manner and stressed what a ‘good lad’ Peter was and how he deserved his winners medal.
Cloughie (c) Daily Telegraph
The Flight Home
On the plane back home the following day, I again found myself mingling with celebrities. The TV pundits Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves (Saint and Greavesie) were travelling back together. We were in Business Class and the complimentary drinks were flowing. Geavesie and I were in a frantic race to try and inhale as many small bottles of wine and miniatures of whisky as possible during the short hop from Schiphol to Heathrow, while Saint was diligently tucking his unopened bottles into his hand luggage. Greavesie apologised:
“You’ll have to excuse him, mate. He’s Scotch, see...”
Saint and Greavesie (c) Daily Mirror
Farewell, Chris
It was to be more than twenty five years before I was to see my old mate Chris Nicholl again. It was at a Birmingham City reserve match, sometime around 2008. We were at Solihull’s ground and I saw Chris lurking behind the goal. He was doing some scouting, for Southampton, I think. I went over to say hello, but he just looked at me blankly, he’d obviously completely forgotten all about me.
Chris’s health deteriorated towards the end of his life, he developed dementia and died in 2024. His death certificate stated that he’d suffered brain damage due to repeated head trauma (heading the ball).
I’m pleased and proud to have known him.
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