What a greatseason it was, I managed to go to all home league games, cup games, a few aways and all the European Cup home games, I lived in Droitwich, Worcs at the time and travelled to games via the Worcester and Bristol branches of the supporters club, but best of all went on the Special to Rome.
I was only 16 at the time and after many arguments with my folks convinced them to stump up the cash to go to Rome, but on 1 condition, I took an adult with me. I said 'i'll be ok i've made loads of friends over the years', but they wouldn't have it, so I asked a family friend called Howard who was a Villa fan but I think he was a Liverpool fan on the quite. Fortunately he said yes and my folks were happy with that. Get in!
Howard and myself went by train to Lime Street on the Monday which was a bank holiday, oh and it was half term from school and I had to do exams on return so should probably have stayed home to revise, yeh right!
We arrived at Lime Street early evening and with the Special not leaving until early Tuesday morning we had to find somewhere to doss. We met a few others in the same predicament as us and decided we would doss on a platform or something.
Some of you may remember that Lime Street station was being redeveloped at the time so finding somewhere was difficult until we got talking to a security guard who said he knew where we could go and took us to the end of one of the platforms where just happened to be a builders hut, it was like Auf Wiedersehen Pet, brilliant.
None of us slept and played cards and chatted most of the night. Next morning we had to go to the ticket office to collect our train and match tickets that had been booked a couple of weeks previous, and off we went to ROME!
The trip allthough long was brilliant. Each compartment was given a large box with a food parcel for all passengers, I think we had going and coming back but do remember the empties getting turfed out at one of the stations in France. You should have seen the look on the faces of the frogs on the platform, priceless.
Once in Rme we were hearded onto coaches and taken to the stadium, it was like whackey racers on the way there and remember The Ultras on scooters giving us loads of abuse, not as much as we got afterwards. As we got into the ground I remember looking to my left and then being bombarded by missiles so we decided to move further round. I can also remember a few Lazio fans in our end and of course were desperate for us to win.
It maybe wasn't the greatest final ever played (we all know what was) but our boys played the perfect European match, got an early ish goal and kept the Italians quite. I thought Souey was outstanding and took no shit of anyone. When the pens arrived we didn't know what to expect unlike now we always win penalty shootouts. I thought oh shit i've come all this way and we could lose on pens, how horrible would that be. With the pens being taken in the opposite end to where all the Reds fans were we couldn't see what Bruce was upto, spaghetti legs and all. Seeing Alan Kennedy score the winning pen was unbelievable, a dream come true.
Following the the lap of honour, or should I say the Red end of honour we had the task of finding the right coach back to the station. That's when the shit started, all the Roma fans had left as soon as Barney scored the winning pen and obviousley put opperation ambush into action. We got pelted with rocks off all shapes and sizes, it was avery frightening time and the Italian police did fuckall to stop it. Eventually we got on a bus back to the station and then more shit. The ultras rode past the busses on scooters 2 abreast and threw wooden crates and rocks thro' the windows. I can remember a scouse lad picking up a crate that came thro' and asked me to hold his legs as he hanged out the window and proceeded to twat a couple of scooter ultra boys of there scooter, unreal. They went one way and the scooter went under the bus.
Despite all the aggro afterwards it was a great trip and something I will never forget and having not had a decent wash for a week I didn't half stink when I got home.
Sorry for running on a bit. Happy days! YNWA
