The arrival of a new manager – which happened to be Tommy Cummings, formerly a star player at Burnley – was of course expected. But the fans were in fact more concerned that the same board was in place. A then very big £78,000 profit had been declared in 1967 (mainly to do with receipts from the World Cup matches held at Villa Park plus a large portion of Hateley’s transfer money), and the fans waited to see how it would be spent.

A further matter of great concern was that transfer requests were put in by three of Villa’s stalwart defenders, Withers, Wright and Seleeuwenhoek. However, only the last-named moved on soon after – to Birmingham City. The other two continued to play their hearts out.
Nothing much changed in terms of results at the start of this season in Division Two; there were seven defeats in Villa’s first nine matches. Although midfielder Tommy Mitchinson arrived early in September, goalscoring was a skill that had seemed to have deserted the Villa.

It was not until nearly the end of September that two new signings began to help stem the tide, yet their appearance also coincided with yet further injuries to Wright and Deakin. The two new players – both bought as strikers – were from Preston; they were Brian Godfrey and Brian Greenhalgh. Both of them were an immediate hit, though it was Greenhalgh that did most of the scoring – he hit 11 goals in his first 15 matches before he sustained injury two games later. When he returned – like John Woodward – he did not recover his scoring form and scored only one goal for the remainder of the season.

Having moved away from Birmingham the year before, I was at Crystal Palace towards the end of Greenhalgh’s pre-injury run. I was impressed by the two BeeGees, and also noted that Willie Anderson was still the whole-hearted battler out on the left wing, as was Lew Chatterley, now at centre-half (‘Slogger’ had already departed to play for the Small Heath team), though Fred Turnbull had been introduced from the reserves into that position that season.

At that point, Villa had lifted themselves out of their poor start and had won more games than they had lost, and also had games in hand whilst lying in 14th place. But, soon after, Greenhalgh was injured and the team did little of note after that. They finished in 16th place, though that was mainly down to Villa losing their last two matches – both at home.

That season did little to inspire the Villa faithful in their hopes for the future, and the Villa Park attendances were continuing to slump.

The supporters had already shown their displeasure at the way things were being run in January, 1968, when a call was made for the resignation of the board en masse. At an EGM, the board managed to survive the crisis – for now.

The 1968-69 season was certainly one of two greatly contrasting halves. The season again started very poorly, with Villa’s first win not occurring until their 11th game, a week after being trounced by Birmingham, 0-4, which firmly fixed Villa at the bottom of the division.

That first win of the season for Villa was not long after the signing of midfielder Barrie Hole from Blackburn, who thus re-joined his former colleague winger Mick Ferguson, who had arrived at Villa Park before the start of the season. Hole was regarded at the time as a fine player and a sound investment, and his signing brought Tommy Cummings’ total expenditure to £200,000 since he took over. However, that was expenditure that seemed to provide little result and the board saw fit to dispense with Tommy Cummings’ services in November following a home defeat by Preston when little more than 13,000 spectators had just about enough and called for the resignation of the Villa board, not the manager.

Then, when Arthur Cox was placed in temporary charge of the team, Hole walked out of the club following an altercation with Cox.

What happened between that November and December was remarkable and is told in detail in Richard Whitehead’s celebrated “Children of the Revolution”. The concerted demands of the supporters brought about the resignation of the board, and in came Doug Ellis, backed by a Pat Matthews-led consortium. By January, the controversial Tommy Docherty arrived as manager, and Villa Park went from a state of dimming lightbulbs to pulsating electricity. Villa stalwart Michael Wright said it all: “It was though we had stepped out of the darkness into the modern era”. The well-known local journalist Eric Woodward came in as the commercial manager and helped to completely transform the public relations set up and approach.
41,250 was the size of the Boxing Day crowd that saw Villa win 2-0 over Cardiff. Only weeks before, the attendances were plummeting towards the 10,000 level.

Though magic was manifest on the pitch and on the terraces, however, examination of the club’s books showed that all was not at all well with the finances, and the board sought help – once more – from the club’s supporters to plug the gap. In addition, the new board found that under the previous administration favours had been widely distributed and had played their own part in the poor state of the club’s finances.

But the ‘feel good’ factor on and around the pitch affected everyone. Barrie Hole had been reinstated and even veteran Peter Broadbent was completely rejuvenated, having spent most of the previous season and-a-half in the reserves. He produced some marvellous performances and is especially remembered for his part in the team’s performances against Southampton in the FA Cup and the next round (though a narrow defeat) at Spurs. Both of these opponents were, of course, top-class sides of that era, and that performance against Spurs showed just how much Villa had ‘travelled’ since the League Cup encounter also against Spurs the previous September, when Villa were ground down in a 1-4 defeat at home.

In the Cup replay against Southampton at Villa Park, a 59,084 crowd were present, making it a fantastic atmosphere. Villa played perhaps their smallest ever forward line at this time, and yet the main memory of that night is of Dave Rudge scorching down the right wing and putting a perfect cross for Lionel Martin to score. It was Broadbent with the pass that put Rudge in for the cross, though – a perfectly weighted defence-splitting pass from the centre circle to the corner flag which even the best player would be proud of. Once Rudge had got to the ball first and skipped over the challenge to square the ball to Martin running in, with Godfrey contributing a deft dummy, there was a split second with the cross still on its way when the whole crowd just knew a goal was inevitable.

In the Derby against Blues near the end of the season, the demand for the match was so great it was made all-ticket! Nearly 53,000 spectators saw Villa win 1-0 in a match that Villa dominated.
But the ‘feel good’ factor was not as good in reality. Villa certainly staved off relegation to the Third Division, but they still only finished 18th. Nevertheless, the new-found optimism was not going to evaporate very easily, particularly as the old board had now been removed, much improved management had been installed, and the fans now seemed to have a real ‘voice’ in the future of the club.

There was one other significant casualty after that season (but not until October). That great servant and Brummie, Alan Deakin, quietly said ‘goodbye’. When he left Villa he was still only 28, yet it seemed as though he had been fighting the club’s cause for so long. Indeed he had, as he first appeared as a regular in the Villa side when still a teenager, but in his near decade in the first team he had only notched up 230 League games owing to his on-going injury problems. Otherwise he might well have been remembered as one of Villa’s ‘greats’ (with a different club management perhaps). Whilst his great England replacement Bobby Moore was set for another World Cup series in Mexico, Deakin went to play out his career at Walsall.

© 2010 John Lerwill

Next week: A False Dawn