This is the second column about my book, Heart of a Lion – a nostalgic look at the decade between 1986 and 1996 and all the shenanigans of being a young Villa supporter during that time. Heart of a Lion is my first book and I’m about 23,000 words into my first draft, so there’s still a long way to go, but it’s been interesting to see how a book can almost write
itself as you start to get some momentum. The initial plan was to base the book around 25 significant games during my first 25 years as a fan. At first, this seemed like a good idea. The memory of watching the 2000 FA Cup semi-final in a packed student house in Preston – trying to ignore a so-called ‘close friend’ who was shouting ‘Miss!’ at the TV screen as Gareth Barry prepared to take his penalty during the shoot-out – is still fresh in my mind, as is the despair of watching that throw-in disappear under Peter Enckelman’s foot on the night when we were thrashed by the Blues in 2002.

But it is as a child that your memories are that much richer, that much more evocative. This would explain why I can barely remember anything about Villa’s UEFA Cup campaign in 1997/98, when we reached the quarter-finals, but can recall a 0-0 draw with Barnsley ten years earlier during our second division days with clarity. As the first draft got under way, it therefore seemed sensible to concentrate on those first ten years of my time as a
supporter – the sights, sounds and smells that are so much of part of a child’s life if he or she is a football fan. Therefore, the book will feature 20 games from that period.

So how do you go about choosing 20 matches for a book? It would be obvious to go with the really massive games, and yes, some of those will be in there. No game before or since has been quite as emotional as the Tranmere semi-final in 1994, for instance, even though I was on watching it on TV at the time. But, as the Bolton and Blues matches stated earlier prove, all fans have their own memories of watching games that are personal to them, and I’m no exception. Looking back, there were some extraordinary and unique moments
during those ten years – from seeing a Villa fan being deliberately run over by a police horse after the last game of the 1988/89 season against Coventry – highlighting a certain attitude from the police towards football supporters at the time – to buying a ticket from a fan for a home game against Bolton in 1995, only to discover – once inside Villa Park – that the seat number stated on the ticket didn’t exist (I had unknowingly bought a fake ticket but amazingly it had got me inside the ground).

All football fans have experiences like these – moments that other people wouldn’t bat an eyelid about, but which are important to the individual fan. Those quirky incidents that make every supporter’s journey with their club an exclusive one, a special one. Maybe we should all write books. Actually, don’t do that. I wouldn’t want the market to be flooded, after all…