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Aston Villa History Thread


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9 hours ago, Brumstopdogs said:

One of my favourite matches. Anyone else also at this match?

 

Great game!

Was in the North Stand for that game. With my Dad. Deano's home debut. 

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That game is a few years before my time, so I was watching along recognising all of these players I've heard things about but never saw in the flesh. Saunders, Atkinson, Spink...Then all of a sudden, David **** James? :D That caught me off guard

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  • 1 month later...

I was going through, purging my VT attachments and found this old post from the history thread in Off Topic.

On 23/03/2018 at 21:02, Mark Albrighton said:

While I was reading about him, another name was referenced that I hadn’t heard of before, a William “Billy” Clarke Gibb.

From the little I’ve read about Billy, it seems he was the first mixed race/non white player to score a league goal in the English First Division.

As far as I can see (i’m not sure where to verify it) he scored the goal on Christmas Day, 1901 against Everton at Goodison Park in a 3-2 win for...Aston Villa.

Clearly, the fact that these men achieved what they did in the game is the most important thing, who they played for is secondary. But I love that he scored it while playing for us.

Here’s a picture I found of him at his time at Bradford City who he joined after us.

Edit - oh and it would seem that after scoring the goal, he played for Villa on Boxing Day the next day, beating Small Heath 1-0 :D

 

12FB09DD-F1E4-4220-B207-91BDAA290933.jpeg


It prompted me to have a dig around see if I could find anything more about Billy. Much to my relief there’s already a Villa related Twitter thread on this trailblazer and pleasingly a picture of Billy alongside his Villa team mates.

There’s a bit about Billy that can be found online, including information about his time during the First World War and the honours he received. Happily, Billy survived that war and outlived the Second World War, reaching an age of 70 (or 71) before dying in 1949.

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On 14/10/2020 at 12:25, MikeMcKenna said:

As it is black history month and this story is Villa Park history, hopefully it is in the right place. Mods, if not please move accordingly. 

From 1911-1947 British Boxing operated a colour bar. To fight for a British Championship, the boxer had to have two white parents. When the ban was lifted in 1948, a guy from Leamington Spa, named Dick Turpin who had a British Guyanese father and an Irish mother became the first Black British boxing champion at Villa Park in front of a 40,000 crowd. 

In 1951 his brother Randolph beat Sugar Ray Robinson becoming world middleweight champion. (Many consider Robinson to be the best pound for pound boxer of all time.)

 

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Sugar Ray Leonard for me Mike, but Robinson was the fancied one.

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  • 1 month later...

Today's memory match on the OS is our great 3-1 win at Anfield on 15th December 2012 (which we were winning 3-0 till Gerrard got a consolation in the 87th minute). 

After such a good performance and result how the hell did we then manage to break the heaviest defeat club record in the next game just eight days later?! That was really weird. What happened in between those two matches?! Did the record breaking Paul Lambert do or say something badly wrong? Or maybe some of that team were just not mentally strong and going 3-0 down made them panic or lose motivation? I suppose complacency may have played a part too following the Anfield triumph.

Edited by robby b
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2 hours ago, robby b said:

Today's memory match on the OS is our great 3-1 win at Anfield on 15th December 2012 (which we were winning 3-0 till Gerrard got a consolation in the 87th minute). 

After such a good performance and result how the hell did we then manage to break the heaviest defeat club record in the next game just eight days later?! That was really weird. What happened in between those two matches?! Did the record breaking Paul Lambert do or say something badly wrong? Or maybe some of that team were just not mentally strong and going 3-0 down made them panic or lose motivation? I suppose complacency may have played a part too following the Anfield triumph.

Yeah, I remember that week being from a very high high to a very low low.

I think we just fundamentally weren't very good, and the positive result was a fluke. Not sure there's much more to it than that.

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3 hours ago, robby b said:

We were in good form going into the game at Stamford Bridge though... on a six games unbeaten run. Benteke was at his peak when he played for us. Weimann was good quite often.

Not so much the front 3, who were still pretty capable of occasionally causing problems for teams at that point; our problems were further back.

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28 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Not so much the front 3, who were still pretty capable of occasionally causing problems for teams at that point; our problems were further back.

Benteke, Gabby & Weimann scored 35 league goals between them in that first Lambert season.

For the sake of comparison, Salah, Firmino and Mane scored 42 between themselves in the league last season.

Considering the gulf in quality between those two trios and the sides in general, those numbers from 12/13 are a pretty good really.

It kinda underlines the argument of the issues being elsewhere on the pitch (and in the dugout).

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On 30/10/2021 at 12:45, Brumstopdogs said:

 

When Dennis went up

To lift the European Cup

We were there!

 

Those few days and the time leading up to them after the semi final, we’re truly amazing. I seemed to have been permanently pissed and singing Rotterdam, Rotterdam, we’re the famous Aston Villa and we’re going to Rotterdam! An amazing time to be a 19 year old Villa fan. I’d love the younger lads, and us old buggers too, to have some days like that in the not too distant future. What a team! What a club!

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