You can’t ask for a more exciting start at a club than being pitched straight into the heat of a local derby. I was temporarily staying in the hotel. On the Friday night, I was trying to get my mind on the next day’s game when there was a knock at the door. ‘I’d like you to come down and meet Andy Gray; we’ve just signed him from Dundee United.’ I had no idea at that stage what great mates we’d grow to become, and my first reaction was ‘Who?’ because I didn’t know him from Adam – but I met him in the hotel reception and was told that he’d also be joining Villa, and although he wouldn’t be cleared in time to play Birmingham, he’d be in the reckoning to face Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park the following week. Andy still came and watched the game, although he had to head straight back up to Scotland after to get his stuff.
Birmingham City had some great players like Trevor Francis and Peter Withe, but Ron Saunders didn’t put too much emphasis on the team you’d be facing. He’d just turn to our big centre-half, Chris Nicholl, and say: ‘You look after Withey, it won’t be a problem to you.’ There was a brilliant atmosphere, with almost 54,000 crammed into Villa Park, and despite trailing 1-0 at half-time we won it 2-1. Chico Hamilton equalised, then Brian Little scored the winner, and importantly for me I made some vital saves and had a cracking game on my debut. I became something of an instant hero to the Villa fans because we had won, and I played up to them with a bit of showmanship – a couple of handstands, and a bit of a gymnastics exhibition. It was the perfect start and I could see myself fitting in at Villa nicely.
Me and Andy swiftly became very good friends, but when we got to the training ground, I swear to God he was absolutely useless! I was thinking to myself, he’s a cracking lad but Villa have got themselves a bit of a dud here. He was from a pretty tough home in Drumchapel in Glasgow and when he had gone home for the weekend he had obviously spent it catching up with his mates in the boozer. When he arrived back at the hotel in Birmingham, he was quickly looking for a drinking partner. Andy was a real livewire and he was a difficult man to say ‘no’ to when he was on a mission. He kept on at me: ‘C’mon Budgie, come out for a pint.’ So we went out, I had a couple of pints with him and then left him to it. He wasn’t one for early nights and went on to a nightclub. I heard him rolling in later on, and it was clear he’d had a good time.
Since meeting Janet, I had become completely dedicated to my football again. I would have the odd pint now and then, but my days of wild binges were over. My routine was that from the Thursday, 48 hours before a game, I would stay in and start trying to prepare for the Saturday. But on the Thursday, I heard the hair-dryer going and there was Andy getting ready to hit the high-spots again. Janet came down to join me on the Friday, so I moved to a different room and left Andy to his own devices. On our way down to breakfast on the Saturday morning – after I’d done my little warm-up routine of stretches and a bit of running – I looked in on Andy’s room. We had a big game, against Tottenham, and there he was snoring away, unbelievably worse for wear. So I left him in bed till about 12 o’clock. Ironically, Tottenham Hotspur had come to the same hotel for their pre-match meal, and they were all sitting there as I dragged a bleary-eyed Andy down to the dining room telling him something to eat would help put a lining on his stomach and straighten him up for the game. As Andy shambled into the dining room he saw Tottenham’s big red-haired defender Willie Young, a Scottish international they had signed from Aberdeen. They knew each other and I think Willie was well known as a fiery character. As Andy walked past the Spurs lads, Willie couldn’t resist a sly dig and shouted at him: ‘Hey Andy, have you been out on the piss again?’ Andy snapped back: ‘Shut it, ya big freckled sheep!’ The Scottish insults were flying back and forward at each other and there was a bit of a commotion.
I eventually managed to calm Andy down, because I think he was still a bit full of the jungle juice, and the two of us jumped into Janet’s Volkswagen Beetle and headed down to Villa Park. The pre-match routine isn’t like now, where you see players out on the pitch warming up, stretching and being put through training drills an hour before the game. Back in the mid-1970s you would just go out at five to three. Any warm-up routines were done in the dressing room. I was stretching off and banging the ball against the wall of the changing room from about 2.15, trying to get myself focused, but Andy had a different approach – by quarter to three there was still no sign of him. A search party was quickly raised, and after a hasty hunt for Villa’s new star striker, just minutes before he was meant to make his home debut, they found him in the players’ lounge watching the horse racing. He didn’t even have his boots with him – he had left them in a plastic bag which he’d slung into the back of the Volkswagen and forgotten. It took Andy the best part of two minutes to get stripped while Janet went out to fish his boots out of the car. When Andy took them out the bag, they hadn’t been washed for a week, there was still mud crusted on them and they were dry as a bone. Andy didn’t bat an eyelid – cool as cucumber, he ran them under the tap, threw them on and then headed up the tunnel.
When the game started he struggled with the pace a little bit in the first few minutes, probably sweating the last traces of bevvy out of his system. But when we got a corner he took off like Superman, flying over the top of everyone to get on the end of it. He was only 5ft 11in and 11-and-a-half stone wet through, but he was unstoppable. He got his head on it and it was blocked on the line. It was a wet day, and he followed through, smacking straight into the post. It would have pole-axed most players, but Andy just got up, dusted himself down and got on with it. I was stood in the goals at the other end, thinking: ‘God, what a header that was!’ I was shouting up at him: ‘Brilliant, keep it going.’ They had Pat Jennings in goal and Andy went into him in a 50-50 and burst his face. At half-time, I turned to him and said: ‘Brilliant, son, absolutely brilliant.’ Now I knew what he was made of, because I wasn’t sure at first. In the second half, he got his chance for a bit of retribution with Willie Young, and gave him an elbow right in the jaw. All the things that had been said about him at the hotel, he’d stored in the memory bank and waited for his chance for a bit of payback. I knew this lad could handle himself no problem! Then, just before the end of the game, another cross came in to the near post and he dived across to half-volley it with his head and score! I’d never seen anyone half-volley with their head. The game finished in a 1-1 draw, and Andy could be proud of his home debut. He wasn’t hanging about after the game to be congratulated, though; he had his clothes on in no time and headed straight for the players’ lounge for a few jars. Me and Janet were heading back to Blackpool immediately after the game for the weekend, but I heard they had to kick him out of there at half-eight because they were shutting it for the night. He just supped up and headed straight down the nightclub. He had been absolutely useless at training, so to witness what I had just seen on the football pitch was nothing short of amazing.
He was an instant hero at Villa, and the fans loved him. The saying that he ‘would put his head where other people wouldn’t put their foot’ has become a bit of a cliché now, but the saying was invented for Andy Gray. He was utterly fearless, a brilliant footballer and a cracking lad, too. After that goal against Spurs, he was never off the scoresheet – forming a potent partnership up front with winger Ray Graydon, who had scored the goal that won Villa the 1975 League Cup – and Andy got us the winner when we beat Man United 2-1 at Villa Park.
I say to this day that Andy Gray is one of the best players I have ever played with. Kenny Sansom, later my team-mate at Crystal Palace, also has to be right up there, but Andy was something else. If I had to go to war and I could only take one man it would be him. He was an absolute warrior. He will always be like a brother to me, and such was his enthusiasm for football it was no surprise to see him carve out such a successful career as a pundit on Sky Sports. Obviously, that ended on a sour note, but I thought it was shocking the way he was treated. He said something off-air about a female assistant referee that he should
n’t have done, but he was treated like he’d committed some horrible crime. It’s an absolute joke that he was sacked, but I’m sure Sky’s loss will be some other broadcaster’s gain. He could even come out here and reunite the old double act with me if he likes! I won’t beat around the bush with all the politically-correct crap that brought him down, that’s for sure! We’ve always looked after one another. He’s had his share of divorce and heartache, but he has always been a fantastic person.
I was only 24 and was getting nearer my intended wedding day on 14 February, 1976. I thought it would be a great idea to get married on Valentine’s Day, a touch of romance to impress Janet – but by a slice of bad luck it turned out that Valentine’s Day that year fell on a Saturday and we had a game at Sheffield United. We had to get married on Sunday 15th instead, and although my last game as a single man ended with us losing 2-1, all the Villa team were out in force and in good spirits when we tied the knot the next day. All my old team-mates from Blackpool were there too, and it was a fantastic day.
The 1975/76 season maybe hadn’t been one of the best on paper for Villa; we had finished only mid-table, but Ron Saunders was clever enough to play the long game and it was clear he had assembled a well-balanced team that was beginning to gel and mount a serious challenge for honours at home and in Europe in the seasons to come.
CHAPTER 8
LONG ROAD TO CUP GLORY
‘Brian Little scored in the last minute and to our great relief we’d finally won the cup.’
We started the 1976/77 campaign like a hurricane, opening with a 4-0 win at home to West Ham, and recording some big wins before Christmas – 5-2 against Ipswich, including a hat-trick for Andy; 5-1 against Arsenal; 3-2 against Man U and 5-1 against Liverpool. We had sent out a clear message that not only could we beat any team in the league on our day – we could tear them apart.
We were also an incredibly fit team, which made me happy. I absolutely thrive on hard training, and though I haven’t found many players willing to put in quite as much I do, Ron Saunders made sure no one was allowed to shirk away from hard work on the training ground. Most of our training was geared towards running. Saunders didn’t get too heavily involved in the tactical side of football, and he was able to get successful results out of the team mainly by signing skilful players and then training them hard, to the point where they were fitter than any other club in the league. He would have us running in ploughed fields and up steep hills. There was plenty of moaning going on behind his back, because any footballer prefers to be training with a ball at his feet, but Saunders was a strict disciplinarian and wouldn’t take any shit. He was ex-Army and his orders were to be followed. Training was unbelievably hard, but the results on the pitch justified his methods.
While we were showing some impressive form in the league, it was an incredible run in the League Cup that defined our season.
We saw off Manchester City (3-0), Norwich (2-1), Wrexham (5-1) and Millwall (2-1), all at home to set up a semi-final, over two legs, against Queens Park Rangers. There were lots of great players in that QPR team – Phil Parkes in goal, Frank McLintock, Dave Webb, Gerry Francis, Stan Bowles and Don Givens – and they would be a tough nut to crack, having already beaten us in the league that season.
The manager kept putting serious pressure on us that we had to win something or we would be regarded as failures. It was his job that was on the line too, but whereas some managers are good at shouldering the pressure themselves and shielding their players so they don’t feel edgy, Saunders never hesitated to share the pressure around. We would later lose out in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup to Manchester United, and while we were riding high in the table the title looked out of our grasp, so he told us we simply had to win the League Cup to make sure we would qualify for Europe.
The first leg of the semi-final was on a frosty night at Loftus Road and it finished a 0-0 draw, which we were happy enough taking back to Villa Park. In the second leg, we were locked at 2-2 with about five minutes to go when QPR got a penalty. Don Givens, their star striker, ran up to take it, but I guessed right and stopped it. It was one of the most important saves of my career and I was cock-a-hoop. Aston Villa later built a fantastic stand at the tunnel end, and after that save I used to call it the John Burridge Stand, because if that penalty had gone in they would not have had the money to build it the following year. After extra time, we could still not be separated, so at the end of the game everyone was looking at each other, thinking: ‘What happens now?’ We were eventually told that the chairmen of the two clubs were going to reach an agreement on a neutral venue for a replay to be held. Our chairman was Doug Ellis at the time and he went to thrash it out with their chairman Jim Gregory. It was decided that a spin of the coin would settle the venue for a neutral ground – if it was tails, it would favour us, and the game would be played at Birmingham City’s ground, if it was heads then it would favour QPR and the tie would be played in London at Highbury. Word filtered down to us that Deadly Doug had lost the toss and the replay would be settled at Highbury, but the popular story doing the rounds among the lads was that when the coin got thrown, it disappeared under a table with Jim Gregory scampering after it. When he re-emerged he was clutching the coin, shouting ‘Heads’. Nobody had seen the coin, or so it was claimed. Doug would have been in an impossible position – he apparently asked for a re-throw, but Gregory wasn’t having it and we were heading to Highbury.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter where the game was played, because we blew them away. Brian Little was outstanding and finished off a hat-trick in the final few seconds, while I played my part and kept a clean sheet. We had cruised past them 3-0 and were heading for a League Cup final against Everton at Wembley.
The problem for me was that I was struggling to be fit for the biggest game of my life. Before the final, I had played in a 4-0 midweek win against Derby and taken a real crack on my kneecap. I had to sit out our match against Leicester the week before the final, and I was in doubt for my first game at Wembley. But while my knee was still agony, I thought to myself: ‘I’ve got to play, it’s a cup final for God’s sake.’ I kept the extent of the pain to myself, refused any further treatment, and declared myself fit to play. I wasn’t nervous about the actual game at all, but I was more worried about my mum coming down safely on the train from Workington. When you were in a final at Wembley then, you were only given four complimentary tickets, but all my relations started to come out of the woodwork and were desperate to see me play my first game at Wembley. I had to get them for aunts and uncles, and by the time I had sorted them all out I had forked out for about 60 tickets myself! It was a far cry from a normal league game where you would get one or two people coming to see you. My mum was an old woman by then and I was worried sick about her making it all the way down from Workington because she didn’t have too much experience of travelling. I needed something to relieve the tension and a practical joke in the team hotel was just the job. I was sharing a room with Andy, which was overlooking the car park. I had been looking out of the window when I noticed there was a big wedding party arriving. It didn’t take much for me to get stupid ideas in my head back then, so I went to the bathroom and filled a bucket with water. Just as the bride and groom were coming I let fly with the bucket of water, tipping it over them. They were saturated. It was a horrible thing to do, I can see that now, but I was pissing myself laughing. I had been in two minds whether to do it, but my partner in crime, Andy, was egging me on: ‘Do it, do it.’ After I’d done the dirty deed, we went down in the lift to check out the damage. The two of us were sitting in the foyer sniggering away like schoolkids as they came in soaked and bewildered. I suppose we were still practically kids anyway. We were both working-class boys and I think the excitement of being in a big five-star hotel just got the better of us. The two of us were used to playing practical jokes on the rest of the lads in the dressing room, but this was maybe taking it a step too far. The next morning at breakfast, Ron Saunders
came down and looked me straight in the eye as he asked: ‘Who threw water over the bride and groom yesterday?’
‘It wasn’t me, boss. I’ve been preparing for the game, you know I have,’ I lied, trying to put on an unconvincing choirboy face. Having now got that confession off my chest, I’d like to offer my belated apologies to Mr and Mrs Soaking-Wet – I hope your marriage has been a happy one since that day!
The final was played on 12 March, 1977 at Wembley and, as was the case for any cup final, it was a full house of 100,000. I remember meeting Princess Anne before the game. Chris Nicholl, our captain, was going along the line of players introducing us and when he came to me he said: ‘This is John Burridge ma’am, the handsome one of the team.’ She was married to Captain Mark Phillips at the time, so I gave her a cheeky look and said: ‘Hello love, how are you? I’m not as handsome as your new husband, though, am I?’ She burst out laughing and had a big smile on her face. All the lads were wondering what I’d said to her, fearing that I’d overstepped the mark with royalty and said something a bit too risqué that was going to get the club into trouble. Everyone else had been very straight-laced, keeping their responses to the standard ‘Pleased to meet you ma’am.’ I bet you she hadn’t been counting on being confronted by a jackass like me!
Budgie - The Autobiography Page 6