Gut Wrenching Sickeners

Gut Wrenching Sickeners

West Ham 1 Villa 0.
March 6th 1980.

A last minute exit to a dodgy penalty, in the sixth round of the FA Cup. My first experience of football-related mourning, but unfortunately not my last.

Arsenal 2 Villa 0.
March 12th 1983.

Sixth round of the FA Cup again. It took me months to come to terms with how awful we were that day.

Everton 2 Villa 0.
February 15th 1984.

After this game I would have taken plenty of convincing that in years to come I would end up growing to love Kevin Richardson. After that handball, if I'd have had a gun I would have shot him.

Villa 0 Small Heath 3.
March 22nd 1986.

This was the football equivalent of bereavement. Definitely the low point of my twenty years of watching the Villa. At the end of the game I threw my season ticket onto the pitch in disgust, and somebody cruelly posted it back to me. I swore that day that I would never attend another game and I kept my promise until the following Friday when someone offered me a lift up to Manchester City on the Saturday.

Oxford 2 Villa 1.
March 12th 1986.

Did the players really want to go to Wembley? Did they want to play a cup final against the .mighty QPR and the rewards that went with it? Did they bollocks.

Southampton 5 Villa 0.
March 21st 1987.

Second division here we come, courtesy of Billy McNeill's Useless Army.

Middlesborough 2 Villa 1.
February 6th 1990.

See number 3, although at least we had the partial consolation that we could say it wasn't a proper cup and we didn't want to play in it anyway.

Villa 0 Wimbledon 3.
February 24th 1990.

After a brilliant performance against Spurs in midweek came the chance to go five points clear over Liverpool. The players involved in this debacle should still hang their heads in shame.

Oldham 3 Villa 0
March 14th 1990.

This was the night on which many of us had to face up to a dreadful, soul-destroying fact. We are simply never going to witness Villa playing in an FA Cup semi-final in our lifetimes. The annual 'this is our year for the cup' ritual has never been carried out with the same conviction since.

Liverpool 1 Villa 0.
March 1992.

Old Trafford, Upton Park, Highbury, Boundary Park. Now we could add another ground on which we've seen the dream die. I suppose I should have accepted the reality of the situation by now.

Blackburn 3 Villa 0
April 1993.

The supporters naturally wanted Villa to win the league. Just about everybody else in the country (except for Manchester United and the terrified bluenoses) wanted us to win the league. But the team? Obviously they didn't want it badly enough. looking back I'm convinced that this was the beginning of the end for Ron, because he was still allowing the I same players who let him down so badly on this night to let him down eighteen months later.

Steve Todd
Taken from issue 38