Remember this just like it was yesterday, what might have been. This is a great article with some rare material included...
31 years ago today, Trevor Francis hat-trick at Villa, I bet he enjoyed it more than most. The 3rd is sublime...
It was ****ing magic to be in Milan as a Brit when this came out, the ultimate in cool. Just as the locals were putting together piano house music (one piano riff and a beat) which was great to be in a club to, but caused endless arguments in my flat as I yelled ‘this is not background music, you dance to it you don’t listen to it’ ’ to my girlfriend of the time. I lost of course.
That would be around the time I went to my first game. I was only two at the time. I lived in the flats behind the 'School End' and must've escaped and got into the game when they opened the gates twenty or so minutes from the end. That would've been what is now known as the West Paddock. My leg was in plaster as I had broken it trying to climb on a parked motorcycle. It toppled over and landed on my leg. Anyway, I don't remember much other than the team we were playing was in white. ( I think? ) And it must've been winter as the floodlights were on. I'll try and have a look later to try and work out what game it might've been. Afterwards I was taken to Shepherds Bush police station. I can't remember the circumstances to how I ended up there, but I can still remember sitting on the counter with a policeman when my mum came to collect me.
It's funny how things trigger memories, that game always reminds me of the October half term and the following day I played in a football match at Bedlam Park just behind the War Museum. When I got home the news on the TV was a big protest in Grosvenor Square against the Vietnam War...
Bedlam Park? Is that Geraldine Mary Harmsworth park Soops? I can't think of many others in that neck of the woods.
That's what it's now called but originally it was the site of Bethlem Hospital for the Insane locally known as Bedlam Park. There were a couple of football pitches in the park just behind the grounds of the War Museum heading towards West Square. We often played matches on those pitches on Sunday afternoons...
I think I'm with you Soops, the pitches are accessed from Brook Drive. I attended my first fatal fire in Brook Drive in 1990. Poor old girl smoking in bed. Geraldine Mary Harmsworth park surrounds the IWM.
You talking about Shepherds Bush nick brought back some memories for me. Not me exactly but my kid Brother. When he was 12, he went missing for 3 days. Where did he end up, yes, Shepherds Bush nick. He stowed away on the ferry from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead and got the train to Euston - on his own aged 12. He spent two days wandering the streets of London before going to the police as he was hungry. Can you imagine a 12 year old doing that today?