With just four Division 2 league games remaining in the 1987-88 season, next up for Aston Villa was an away trip to Crystal Palace. The Villans were top of the division with seventy points from forty games. Many of those points had been acquired away from home. In fact, we had won thirteen of our twenty away games thus far. Only a few points separated the top teams though – Millwall were in second place, level on points with Villa. Middlesbrough and Blackburn were just one point behind in third and fourth. All three of those teams had a game in hand on Villa. There was a feeling that we really needed three points at Palace if we were to gain automatic promotion. Palace had promotion hopes themselves; the Eagles were in sixth place, just five points off Villa.
I was fifteen and it was my first year of regularly attending Villa away games. What a great year to start too! Our away record was superb, we were taking huge numbers everywhere and the home teams were turning out in bigger numbers when the Villans were in town. In fact, approximately half of the clubs in the division had recorded their highest home league attendances against the famous Aston Villa that season.
Crystal Palace versus Aston Villa – Saturday 9th April 1988
Despite it being April, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground that morning as our coach departed from the Aston Villa Leisure Centre for the journey to Selhurst Park. We used the official supporters’ club coaches that season for away travel. As a fifteen-year-old, decisions about where to go for a pre-match pint were not yet a concern. My only worry that morning was whether we would be first on the coach, to claim the back seat and hang our flag in the back window. As I recall, we didn’t get the back row that morning. Perhaps that was an omen for the rest of the day.
Those who stood in the Holte End in the 1980s may remember some fans would throw handfuls of torn paper, usually newspaper, into the air when the Villa players emerged from the tunnel before kick off. It created a mini ‘ticker tape’ effect. I don’t know when or why it started, perhaps it caught on after the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, where ‘ticker tape’ is still one of the enduring images. Anyway, on the coach to Palace, one of our group suggested we rip up our tabloids and put the bits in a carrier bag, take them into the ground and throw them when Villa came out. I agree that it sounds utterly ridiculous now but we were fourteen and fifteen years old and people did this kind of thing back then (really)!
As it happened, we didn’t actually make kick off that afternoon. It was a nightmare journey, of over five hours, due to an accident on the M1 followed by road works on the M25.
The Match
Crystal Palace: Suckling, Finnigan, Burke, Pennyfather (Pardew), Nebbeling, Cannon, Salako (Pemberton), Thomas, Bright, Wright, Barber.
Aston Villa: Spink, Gage, Gallagher, A Gray, Evans, Keown, Birch, Platt, Thompson, S Gray, Williams (McInally).
The Palace side, managed by Steve Coppell, featured the Mark Bright and Ian Wright strike partnership and dubious future England players John Salako and Geoff Thomas. In goal was the brilliantly-named Perry Suckling!
As for Villa, Graham Taylor gave Gareth Williams, who had been signed from Gosport Borough for £30,000 in January (sounds a bit like a Paul Lambert signing), his debut. Wearing number 8 that day was David Platt, who had scored three goals in his first eight games after recently signing from Crewe Alexandra. Popular central midfielder Andy Gray faced his previous club, having signed from Crystal Palace earlier in the season.
We got to the turnstiles at about 3.20pm. A few hundred Villa fans had arrived late due to the traffic. It was chaotic – with everyone jostling to get in, desperate not to miss any more of the action. A police horse trod on the foot of a lad next to me in the queue. He was nearly in tears.
We finally squeezed through and paid cash at the gate to enter the Holmesdale Terrace. We entered at street level and once inside were at the top of a large, uncovered terrace. I was fascinated by it initially, as it was so different to any other ground I’d visited. We were in the enclosure in the corner. We quickly realised that the view (from pretty much everywhere) was dreadful. Vision was obscured by fences and green netting, not to mention the floodlight pylon within that section. We eventually took our place near the front of the terrace. It wasn’t so much ‘obscured view’ but more ‘no view’.
On the pitch, the Villans, in their all white Hummel strip, took the lead in the first half. David Platt scored his fourth Villa goal of the season and his twenty-fifth goal of the season in all competitions, including his earlier goals for Crewe Alexandra.
Half Time: Crystal Palace 0 Aston Villa 1
I was then involved in a bizarre incident at half time. Despite the late arrival and chaos on entering the ground, the bag of ripped newspaper had somehow made it in with us. As we missed kick off, we decided to throw it around as the teams took to the pitch for the second half. So we all grabbed a handful and as the Villa team trotted back out on the pitch, up it all went. It was a ‘damp squib’, there is nowhere near the same noise and excitement levels following half time as there is before the game, so it was a bit embarrassing. To make things worse, a policeman appeared next to us in the walkway between the pens. He looked directly at me and said, “Pick all that up.” I laughed nervously; there must have been a thousand bits of paper on the steps. I thought he had to be winding me up. Wrong! He repeated to me and only me (not the other four litterers), “Pick it up or I’ll throw you out.” I thought about it for two or three seconds then scarpered up the terrace into the crowd, banging my head on the first crush barrier as I ducked below it. My pals weren’t far behind, worried they might be next in line for litter picking duty!
I could now barely see a thing from the top of that terrace but I did see Ian Wright equalise for Palace from the penalty spot. It was a poor game – well, what I saw of it was. I spent about a third of it outside or hiding from that merciless copper. There were only 16,476 in attendance but that was actually Palace’s biggest crowd of the season so far, although they did exceed that on the final day of the season.
Full Time: Crystal Palace 1 Aston Villa 1
Post-Match Thoughts
Everybody was very worried! Millwall had beaten Plymouth Argyle. Blackburn Rovers beat Swindon Town and Middlesbrough beat Manchester City. Bradford had also won and they were now right amongst it, a point behind us with two games in hand, though we still had to face them at home.
So having started the day in first, we finished it in fourth place, with just three games remaining to try and clinch one of the top two automatic promotion places. We’d now won just one of our last six games – not the form to take into the play offs if that’s how it was going to turn out.
Of course, we didn’t require the play offs in the end but it couldn’t have been any closer: we were promoted on goals scored ahead of Middlesbrough.
We haven’t actually beaten Crystal Palace away since the 1980-81 season when we won the league title. I’ll be at Selhurst Park on Saturday, hopefully to see us end the opposition’s record for a change!
UTV!
