By james art Our story of the worst violence at Villa Park has always been a talking point among football fans online.
Last week we brought you unseen pictures and detailed accounts of the hooliganism during Aston Villa’s ‘friendly’ match against Rangers on 9 October 1976.
It may be years since the disturbing events of drunken youths wreaking havoc on the ground and around Birmingham city centre>Birmingham city centre.
But after our nostalgic recollection of Sick Saturday, we’ve been inundated with comments from supporters who still remember the ugly scenes.
To read a detailed account of what happened that day, click here
Here is a selection of the responses we received.
Angela Fisher was Jones
At the time I was a cadet in the St John Ambulance. Cadets were invited “just in case” and often sat through the entire game. Not this day. Ten minutes into the game we were called back to the first aid room.
It’s no exaggeration to say it looked like a war zone. I watched a guy who had been punched in the nose, was drunk and had a nosebleed and kept trying to light a cigarette. I was taking care of a man who was stabbed in the side. He didn’t feel the stabbing, he only knew when he felt a wet shirt that it was blood. I remember four police officers holding down one officer who was assaulted.
Ambulances were going back and forth to the hospital. We abandoned keeping a record of all the wounded, too many people needed care… and we ran out of room in the book. It wasn’t until after the official deadline that we found out that the game had been postponed for the second half.
My greatest memory of that day was standing next to a lovely lady from Glasgow who said to me ‘please don’t judge the whole of Glasgow by what happened today’. And I never did.
Richard French
It wasn’t nice, I remember going into the Holte End and a Rangers fan wanted to swap scarves, I declined his kind offer. Then a fellow Villan said to me, “I think we should get out of here.” I looked up at the top of the Holte to see a mass of Rangers scarves. OMG I thought I don’t like this at all. Then I saw my friend on the track next to the field.
I joined him and we went under police escort to the old Witton End. The game itself looked good for Villa and we took the lead, Deehan scored if I remember correctly. Then right in the second half we scored again, I can’t remember who scored off the top of my head. After that, all hell broke loose, the match was abandoned.
Martin Binks
I was there with my dad Ken Binks on his birthday. We were fine except for my father’s slight twist in his knee. My late mother and brother stayed in town when the buses left.
Mickey Sheldon
I remember my father wouldn’t let me go, I wonder why
Kevin Mauby
He was there the other day. We had to stand at the old Witton Lane end as the Rangers fans were at the Holte End. Their fans were drunk before the game. One of us kicked the double-decker bus we were in. There were reports of coaches dropping off fans in the city center at 2am.
John Bramey Winter
I was at the match but managed to avoid injury. As a 16-year-old, I have been to many home games since the age of five with my father and I have never seen anything as wild as that day.