The Baggies for The Cup?…

With the F.A. Cup quarter-finals approaching this weekend I am reminded of a previous year when West Bromwich Albion, who play at Division One side Bristol Rovers on Sunday, had a great run. It will soon be the fortieth anniversary of their F.A. Cup Final victory against Everton. The Baggies, one of the Midland’s “Big Six” (Don’t laugh – Villa, BlueNoses, W.B.A., Wolves, Coventry, and Walsall) won 1-0 at Wembley on that occasion, thanks to Jeff Astle’s low drive from 15 yards past Gordon West in the Toffee’s goal, early in the first period of extra-time. As an eleven year old Villa fan growing up on the north side of Birmingham in the late spring of 1968, I was quite pleased. Villa fans hated the BlueNoses, and most didn’t particularly care one way or another about the Baggies as West Brom are known, even though the Albion’s ground, The Hawthorns, was just beyond the Birmingham city limits and was almost as close to my home in Erdington, Birmingham 24 as St. Arthur’s of The BlueNoses was. My Dad didn’t like Everton because he couldn’t stand scouse “comedian” Jimmy Tarbuck (actually a Liverpool fan) and even though neither of us liked the Baggies either, the Tarbuck factor was good enough for me as we settled down to watch the match on the tele. I t was the first Final to be shown in colour actually – too bad we only had a black and white t.v.!
As far as I was concerned, virtually all Villa fans were indifferent towards the Albion; we kept all our true venomous hatred for the team from Small Heath, Birmingham 9 and left it to the Wolves fans to hate the Albion and vice versa, I thought. However, within six months I was to find out that many of the Albion fans did not share my relatively uncommitted view of Baggie/Villan relationships. In the early summer of 1968 I left junior school in the friendly confines of B 24 and in September of that year began a seven year stint at Handsworth Grammar School, located just inside the Birmingham border, a couple of miles from the Hawthorns. The school was far from a haven for Villa fans. I now met a whole army of Villa-hating Albion fans who, over this period of my further education, one which frequently saw a good West Brom team and a Villa team fall as low as Division Three, made my life a recurring battle of nasty jibes, endless taunting, and more than a few “knees in the bollocks”….
Apparently nobody had told these Baggies that they were supposed to vent their feelings on the Wolves fans further north. Many did, I was informed, but the large Baggie-infested communities on the Birmingham border were much closer to Villa Park than Wolves’ Molyneux ground and therefore Villa were their arch enemy…
I had my moments however and the one that comes immediately to mind came about as a result of Astle, who was deemed somehow worthy to put on an England shirt during the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, missing an easy chance against Brazil which could have turned the game (England lost 0-1 in the group stage so admittedly it was a bit of a reach to blame him for our eventual exit from the tournament on him, but we did anyway). As a result, over the ensuing years, every time we played the Albion we treated the Baggie Hordes to some very loud chanting about their hero – “Astle lost the World Cup; Astle lost the World Cup: Astle lost the World Cup”, ad nauseum…The Albion fans hated this chant and therefore it became a classic…
Prediction…Bristol Rovers 0 Baggies 2…