at Villa Park: “Shaw... Williams prepared to
venture down the left... There’s a good ball
played in for Tony Morley... Oh, it must be.
And it is! Peter Withe!”
“People always say it bounced up and hit
Withey’s shin,” grins Mortimer. “God, I wish
I’d have scored it.”
Withe reiterates for the umpteenth time
it definitely, absolutely, without a shadow
of a doubt did not come off his shin. “It hit
a divot and shot off at a right-angle!” he
protests to FFT. “But the more you watch it,
the more you see that it wasn’t off my shin.
I made good contact. Jimmy Greaves asked
how I managed to hit the post from there –
I told him I was trying to play a one-two but
the net stopped it coming back!”
Morley, however, remains unconvinced,
insisting, “It’s the luckiest goal he ever scored
and the most important in Villa’s history. If
he meant that with his right foot, it would’ve
gone over the bar! He just stuck his leg out
and it went in,” he smiles, before adding with
a wink, “It was a very good cross, though...”
Taking the piss clearly comes more easily
for Morley than it did for both Withe and Ken
McNaught, whose participation in the post-
ASTOn
VILLAgame festivities was delayed by a protracted
drugs test. Fortunately, the duo started their
own party to speed up their urine samples.
Marched off to a little caravan under a stand,
Withe and McNaught were plonked opposite
Bayern opponents Klaus Augenthaler and
Wolfgang Dremmler when officials produced
a receptacle big enough to display flowers in,
let alone store their pee.
Withe spotted a stadium worker clutching
a crate of beer destined for the Villa dressing
room. Pointing to the lion on his club crest,
the match-winner convinced him to hand it
over. The Bayern players declined his offer of
a drink with him.
“I sunk mine and then headed back to an
empty changing room,” recalls Withe.
“There was no one left except Jim Paul the
kitman, who gave me a bottle of champagne.
The bath still had water in it, so I climbed in.
I remember thinking, ‘We’ve won one of the
world’s biggest competitions and I’m sitting
here drinking on my own’.
“Before we know it, Jim comes back to tell
us that if we’re not ready in 10 minutes, the
coach will go without us!”Villa’s sixty and seventysomethings are in
their element as they remember how they
celebrated, sniggering like schoolboys as they
describe the pranks, calamities and slapstick
moments that soon followed. Distinguished
gentlemen of their vintage probably should
know better, but their everyman appeal is
rooted in the fact that they absolutely don’t.
Many of the stories – rehearsed, possibly
slightly misremembered or even embellished
over the decades – involve the trophy itself.
Momentarily losing it on the team bus and
discovering Withe had stowed it in the toilet
for safekeeping, for example; Mortimer trying
to fill it with eight bottles of bubbly at their
Amsterdam afterparty before realising it was
too heavy to drink from; Cowans calling the
police to retrieve it after the prize was stolen
from a Midlands pub while he was boozing
with fans at the bar. Morley can’t contain his
delight when he pictures Cowans scrabbling
around on his hands and knees after their
plane home touched down on the tarmac at
East Midlands Airport.
“He’s horrible isn’t he?” eye-rolls Cowans.
“I was on the plane trying to find my medal.
I thought I’d lost it and there’s him [Morley]
sat there with a big grin on his face.”
“Careful, careful,” says Morley, still laughing
his head off all these years on. “He lost it – it
fell out of his pocket!”
“Hold on a minute, it fell out of my pocket?!”
says Cowans. “He put his hand in my pocket.
So he’d nicked it and I was in bits.”“IT’S THE LUCKIEST GOAL
WITHEY SCORED AnD THE
MOST IMPORTAnT In VILLA
HISTORY – HE STUCK HIS
LEG OUT AnD IT WEnT In”
Above Spink
becomes the
unlikely hero
with a string
of super saves
Below Withe
scores what
proves to be
Villa’s winner