Aston Villa’s European Cup Winning Side Was Phenomenal – But What Went On Behind The Scenes?
Yesterday night, 5 members of Aston Villa’s European Cup winning side (Andy Blair, Dennis Mortimer, Tony Morely, Gordon ‘Sid’ Cowans and Nigel Spink) shared stories from their career and time at Aston Villa. Here’s some of the best stories they revealed.
Fined For The Goal Of The Season?
In the week before Aston Villa visited Everton in 1980/81, manager Ron Saunders had told Tony Morely that he wasn’t going to play against his boyhood club. Morely was in the dressing room at Goodison around an hour before kickoff when Saunders came in and told him he was going to start because “the lad I was going to play instead is a bit too young”. Morely wanted to get one back at Saunders so when he scored the “goal of the season” he made sure to give Saunders a two fingered salute to ‘thank’ him.
After this incident Saunders didn’t say a word to Morely for around a week before calling him into his office. Saunders asked what he meant by the fingers and Morely joked that it was because he planned to score twice but only scored once. Morely was given a £100 fine, despite scoring the goal of the season.
This didn’t happen just once though, the following season Villa travelled to Berlin to face Dynamo Berlin. Saunders had told Morely that he was never going to score two goals. Morely proceeded to score twice and after scoring the second he celebrated as he had the previous season at Goodison Park. Saunders again refused to speak to Morely for about a week before handing him a £100 fine.
When In Rotterdam…
In the days leading up to the European Cup Final in 1982, Aston Villa didn’t train in case someone from Bayern Munich was in the crowd watching them train. Because of this, the players had a bit of spare time in the afternoon. Being in the Netherlands and with them being a group of lads, you can guess what they got up to while they had free time. They were each given 30 Guilders to spend in their free time by the club. The day before the European Cup Final they were doing as you expect when they ran out of money. Manager Tony Barton was understandably furious when he found out. The next day they won the European Cup.
You’ve Got No Future!
Nigel Spink used to play youth football for West Ham United. He’d only played three times at youth level when he was called up to play in goal for the reserve team. He conceded 6 times. Afterwards, he had a meeting with both the General Manager and Manager at the time. They asked him if he had any work experience lined up at the end of the year, and he had. He was told to keep the experience because he was never going to have a career in football. Six years later he kept a clean sheet and won the European Cup in his second first team appearance in 5 years. Never give up.
Not Good Enough For The Office.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Nigel Spink had never played a game of football in his life before his substitute appearance in the European Cup Final. Spink attempted to renew his contract at Villa by walking into the office of Ron Saunders and negotiating it with him. Saunders stopped Spink from moving foreward and told him that he wasn’t good enough to negotiate in the office, so he’d have to negotiate in the car park. They did, and Spink recieved a new contract on the exact same money and got just a one year extension. It proved worthwhile in the end.
As is evident, things were very professional 40 years ago. We’d also like to add our support for Gordon Cowans, who is suffering through dimentia. We hope for Cowans and his loved ones to get the help and support they need.