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As we open our new show Would You Bet Against Us? which celebrates Aston Villa winning the European cup in 1982, Paul speaks to Dennis Mortimer, the captain of Villa at the time.
From his early days at infant school dribbling a tennis ball in the playground, through to training with Kirby boys under 15s, to the peak of his career in Aston Villa’s heyday, Dennis shares his career highlights and what it takes to be a European Champion.
Told by an Idiot's Artistic Director Paul Hunter in free-flowing conversation with friends and colleagues from the theatre industry, delving into what made them the people they are today.
PAUL: Hello, and welcome to Regrets,
I've Had a Few.
I'm Paul Hunter, Artistic Director of Told
by an Idiot, and this is a podcast where I
talk to friends and colleagues,
delving into what made them
the person they are today.
Hello and welcome to Regrets,
I've Had a Few, the Told by an Idiot
podcast. Now, as I record this month's
edition, we are days away from opening our
new show, 'Would You Bet against Us?' At
the Birmingham Repertory Theatre,
which celebrates my football team,
Aston Villa, and in particular,
their greatest ever achievement.
40 years ago this very month,
they became one of only five English
teams to lift the European Cup.
And I am thrilled and slightly like a ten
year old version of myself,
because joining me today is iconic Villa
player and legend and captain
of that side, Dennis Mortimer.
Welcome, Dennis.
DENNIS: Hi, Paul.
Good to be with you.
PAUL: Now, I wonder, to kick us off, Dennis,
pardon the football pun, if we could
go way back to your early memories.
When did you first start kicking a ball?
DENNIS: I couldn't remember
the first physical time I hit a ball,
but I would imagine it
was in the infant school.
It's quite interesting, actually, because
you've got this playground full of kids
and we wouldn't have
been using a big ball.
We probably would have been using a tennis
ball because they wouldn't let you have
the big ball, because in case of hitting
someone with it and everything.
But I think I remember always running
around and weaving in and out of other
kids and everything with the ball
and maybe other guys who were trying
to chase after you to get it off you.
But I think it was that confusion
in a situation like that where you knew
you had to be decent with the ball.
So its probably just one of those
early thoughts in your head that when I've
got a ball, if I want lots of touches
on it, I'm going to have to keep it.
Yeah.
I honestly feel like
that was probably the time.
I do remember being in the infant school
and if we weren't
running in and out of people with a ball,
we were doing it as a plaything.
And these are the things that you need
when you start growing up and you get
those fundamental movements, you know,
of dodging and weaving and everything.
And that's all we did, really,
in those days, because there was no
computers, the television was rubbish.
So you made your own fun and it was all
about doing sort of adventurous
things most of the time.
Well,
PAUL: it's very interesting hearing you say
about playing with a small ball like
a tennis ball and having to kind of
control that small ball at an early age.
That's fascinating.
Now, am I right?
I remember you saying to me that you also
maybe this is when you're a bit older,
but you went to a school where
there was a very good football team.
Obviously, you're from Liverpool,
so some great players that came out
of Liverpool, but when you were little,
you were a team that was a good team.
DENNIS: Yeah, well, not so much little,
but growing up, but in those later years
in secondary modern school as it was then.
I come from a town called Kirby,
just outside of Liverpool.
And we had three senior
boys schools, right.
There was St Kevins,
there was Ruffwood and then there was
Brookfield High, which is where I went to.
From those schools, the
Kirby boys team of under 15s would have
been chosen from those three schools.
And I was one of those fortunate ones
with a couple of others from my school
to actually be in that Kirby boys team.
But the thing about that team was
that it's actually contained,
actually four guys who actually went
on to win the European Cup,
which is no mean feat,
really for such a small town as we were.
PAUL: That's extraordinary.
Can you share the names
of the other players?
DENNIS: Yeah, well, myself, obviously.
And then Kenny Swain,
who was a teammate of mine, obviously,
when we won the European Cup,
Terry McDermott played for Liverpool and
Phil Thompson, who played for Liverpool.
Now, Phil.
Yeah, Phil was a year younger than us,
so he didn't play in our Kirby boys team.
He was from the following year.
But Phil and I went actually to the same
school and
wouldn't have thought that there'd be two
young people
who went on to win the European Cup
who actually went to the same school.
PAUL: I can't believe there is Dennis.
I think that's fairly unlikely.
You must have had some
coach at Kirby boys team.
DENNIS: Listen, I think it was all about
natural ability, to be honest.
Listen, football was what we played, Paul.
We didn't stop playing football as kids.
We were out there all the time
doing athletic things.
We didn't sit around,
we were out there doing it.
And Consequently our skills were getting
honed all the time, getting
better and better and better.
And yet you do need a coach to obviously,
first of all, see who's available,
see what players will fit into a team,
and then he puts it together and then you
go out there and with his guidance,
you start to learn about positioning
and everything like that.
So, yeah, we had a decent team.
PAUL: Well, that sounds extraordinary.
And obviously we're going to talk about
coaches and one manager and coach
in particular a bit later in this chat.
But at what point did you realise
that this might be a career,
that you could play professionally?
When did that start to get in your mind?
DENNIS: I think that was always
in your dreams Paul.
PAUL: Yeah,
it was in mine! It didn't work
out for me though Dennis,
I had to go down the showbiz route.
DENNIS: Listen, you didn't do too bad.
Don't worry.
Yeah, I think, being a Liverpool fan,
I started going to watch Liverpool
with my dad and a couple of my other
brothers, probably about
the age of twelve.
And obviously in those days when we was
watching Liverpool,
it was a great Shankly team.
And in those days, you needed to be
in the ground by 2 o'clock
with a 3 o'clock kick off
because the gates would shut.
There was that much enthusiasm
for football in those days,
because that was the thing you did.
I reckon I started and then, you know,
once I started watching the players,
like Peter Thompson and Ian Callaghan
and Gordon Milne and Ian St John,
all these people now,
they started to sort of have an impression
on you and then you start dreaming
yourself that one day you'd love to be
playing football at that level and going
on and lifting trophies and all that.
So it starts early.
It really does no different from me.
I did dream that one day,
not playing for Aston Villa,
but playing for Liverpool,
but I had to go a different
route to win that trophy.
And that was to obviously go down
the route of going to Coventry,
then joining Villa.
And that's where we had all our success.
PAUL: Was Coventry your first
professional team then?
Yeah, at 15, I joined at 15.
You could leave school at 15 and then
the following year it was 16.
So I just got in before that sort
of watershed of being 16, but no,
I started my apprenticeship and in those
days it was a three year one.
So, yeah, I was 15 when
I joined Coventry City.
PAUL: Well, were you at that stage,
were you always a midfielder?
DENNIS: Not really, no.
I think you had two teams.
You played for your school
and then you played
for the town team, which was Kirby boys.
When I used to play for the school team,
I would be a forward.
I would score a lot of goals.
I used to keep a record of the games
played, but obviously when I left home
at 15, I left all that at home, all
those records.
And to my horror,
I left home then with not only all my
records, but all my Marvel Comics,
right from number one, going forward,
Spiderman, Daredevil, Iron Man,
the Fantastic Four, I had all these.
I had a paper round, so I had a bit
of money to be able to buy these comics.
But my mum and dad moved house and forgot
to tell me and they threw everything away.
PAUL: Oh, Dennis, they'd be worth a few bob now.
DENNIS: They would now, but you know,
water under the bridge, Paul.
PAUL: Yeah, exactly.
DENNIS: So when I was at school,
in the school team, I play up front,
but then when I play for Kirby boys,
I played out wide on the right hand side,
part of probably a midfield come forward
unit in those days,
because systems were a bit different
than four two four, it might have been.
So the four at the front would have been
two wings and two forwards,
two midfield players and four defenders.
Yeah.
So that's how it was.
PAUL: And when you joined Coventry,
where did you play when you were
first starting at Coventry?
DENNIS: Very similar really.
I started off playing out on the wing,
not central.
Eventually when I went to central
midfield, that evolved
obviously, throughout my playing
days and also circumstances.
So when I started playing in the first
team, it might have been that I was...
My first game actually was against
Liverpool in an FA cup tie.
And it was on a snowbound pitch
in January, which wasn't the best
opportunity to go and make your debut
when you're trying to run on snow.
But the game went ahead.
But on that game I played left wing.
So that was my first game in the first
team playing on the left wing.
Now unusual because I was a right footed
player,
but because the vacancy at the time was on
the left wing, I played on the left wing.
But then throughout my early years,
then playing in the first team,
I would play on the right wing,
I would play in the middle.
And that was, as I said,
what that was all about at the time,
was if there was a player injured
in the midfield area,
then I could step into that area.
And so I picked up a central
role, a wide role.
And that's the way it developed.
I think it wasn't until
those late years at Coventry,
just before I actually moved to Villa,
where that sort of central role
started to develop for me.
PAUL: Okay, now I think I remember you saying,
Dennis, before,
that when you made the move to Villa,
it came a bit out of the blue.
You didn't know much about it,
is that right?
DENNIS: Well, I had an inkling of it. Up
to that point, there'd been stories
the season before about transfers and
everything, but nothing had come about.
But then I remember going in, it was
just before Christmas in 75.
One of our players called David Cross,
he actually played at Norwich
under Ron Saunders, his manager.
PAUL: Okay.
DENNIS: I remember coming in on the Monday
morning, having played on a Saturday.
And once we started,
Dave just came over to me and said, oh,
I had my former manager on the phone last
night asking a few questions about you.
I said, alright.
I said, who's that?
He said Ron Saunders.
So I said, alright.
And I didn't think anything about it.
I just thought it's just talk again.
But the fact that no one who worked under
Ron before, like Dave had, had never
come up to me and said, oh,
so and so are interested in you.
So that was the first time.
But listen, I went away.
I went home that day and I
didn't even think about it.
But then the next morning,
early next morning half past eight,
I'm up, gets a phone call.
The club now asking me to go in because
the manager wants to see me, so
as soon as I got that phone call,
I don't get phone calls at half eight
in the morning from the
football coach Paul, there's no way.
I knew, I started to put
two and two together.
Yeah, that two and two together.
Now, when I got to the ground,
Secretary said, look
Villa are interetsed in signing you.
We're going to take you
to Stonebridge Island,
which was on the A45, which was not
far away from where Ron used to live.
And he was going to take me then
to this roundabout on the A45.
I was getting to Ron's car then,
and then we were going to drive to Villa
Park onto the M6 and then to Villa Park.
And that's how it all started, really.
So it was a big surprise,
but having got the phone call and I
started putting two, two together.
PAUL: What about your early memories
of playing at Villa Park?
What was it like going out onto
Villa Park and those fans?
DENNIS: Right.
Okay, so the first game,
I don't know what to expect,
really, at Villa Park.
I've never been there before.
I'd never played there because Aston Villa
weren't in the first division when I was
playing. So when I've left Coventry, now,
I've gone to a club who've just got
promotion from the second division.
Ron Saunders has brought them up,
also won the league cup that same season.
So we're now playing Villa Park.
I've looked at the ground,
it's an old ground, but it's much
different from Highfield Road.
Highfield Road is like a new
ground compared to Villa Park.
All the old signs that were up,
all the old windows with stained glass
and everything, it was a really
sort of antiquated place, to be honest.
Anyway, I've gone into the ground,
got everything sorted out,
signed the contract.
So the first game is
on Boxing Day against West Ham.
Get to the game.
I've got no expectations about what kind
of audience, what kind of
attendance there would be.
So I step out now for my first game
on Villa Park and there's
52,000 in the ground.
PAUL: Good Lord.
DENNIS: I was just amazed by that, really,
because I was used to like 20
to 30,000 at Highfield Road.
But the ground is just
rampacked with supporters.
PAUL: Wow.
DENNIS: So it was difficult not to give
it some kind of thought.
There's a few eyes on me now.
PAUL: I can imagine.
DENNIS: And if I think about my younger self going
at that same time with my dad and standing
on the Holt end and stuff, and of course,
I go now and it's a great atmosphere,
but that what you're describing for a
player, must have been extraordinary.
PAUL: And you mentioned the league cup success
and then, of course,
we won it again in 77.
And then I'll take you now towards,
of course, the extraordinary achievement
of winning the first division title
and obviously a lot
of people favoured teams like Liverpool
and then obviously Ipswich Town as we
battle with them throughout the season.
Again, I think you've mentioned this
before, but actually Tony Morley
mentioned this game as well.
Can you talk a little bit about the game
against Liverpool that season,
at Villa Park?
DENNIS: Yeah, the one at Villa Park, I think was
I felt would be the real watershed for us
really from the point of view of
now stamping our sort of credibility
for being on the top or in the top two. A
t the time as well, Liverpool were always
the one team you feared most because they
always had this ability to have
that consistency throughout the season.
And you look at the record,
they might win the Championship by one
point, but the thing about them
was that they knew how to do it.
Yeah.
From our point of view, this is new,
but that game now was the game that,
going into it, I just thought,
we need to, now if we can win this one, w
e can really, now, I felt,
put Liverpool out the race and then
it'd be just ourselves and Ipswich.
So the game, we're going into that game,
it's a 47,000 sellout and everything.
So it was a great atmosphere
and everything, and we go into that game.
It is all about winning the game.
That game is all about winning, it's
not drawing, it's about winning.
And although it was only two points
for a win, obviously even if we lost it,
there was still time
to regain those points.
But this one, I think was just
from our point of view to try and send
a message to Liverpool, hey you guys,
you're not going to win
this league this season.
There's going to be someone new on top
of the table this season, you know.
PAUL: And what about the goal you scored?
DENNIS: Yes.
Well,
when we've been out with Q and A's
with the guys and all that, I mean,
Tony makes a point of saying that he felt
that was the goal of the season from his
point of view, not the one he got.
As you all know, Paul,
you know his goal and that's part
of that great season,
Tony's goal of the season,
but he just thinks that second goal
against Liverpool, the one I got,
was just, it epitomised really
the way we played as a team.
Because the whole thing,
the whole sequence around that goal
and it's so vivid in my mind is that
Kenny Swain collects the ball and just
outside the penalty area on the right
hand side near the corner flag.
He then starts to rub with the ball
because his space to go because the player
who's been dispossessed really has been
their left back, which was Alan Kennedy,
and he's right up the pitch now,
so there's a bit of space
up that wing. Anyway,
so Kenny now starts on his run. A
s I always did,
I'm sort of watching about,
watching the play, see what's going on.
I'm now on the edge of the box.
Yeah.
As soon as Kenny started setting off,
I've set off with him and I'm just running
down the centre of the pitch now
and Kenny keeps going, going, going.
I keep going, going, going, yeah.
Anyway, Kenny gets to the halfway line.
Now, the Liverpool team
have all pushed up.
They're all pushing up to the halfway line
because they are now trying to make
an offside trap from their point of view.
Anyway, Gary Shaw and Peter Withe start
running back towards the halfway line.
As Kenny gets to the halfway line,
he does like a little back pass,
he just leaves the ball, then a little
crossover, what we call, with Gary Shaw.
Gary now collects the ball
on the right wing.
He turns inside on his left foot and then
he sees me, he spots me running through
the centre of the pitch and then he plays
the ball into the space behind,
behind the Liverpool defence.
So now I'm running towards the goal.
I've got Ray Clemence in front of me.
I've got 25,000 fans in the opposite end,
all screaming, thinking,
what's going to happen here?
Now I've got this big space
and one of the hardest things in football
is when you get a 1 v 1,
especially when you're running,
when you get those instinctive goals where
the ball comes to, you just hit it
and it flies in the back of the net.
They're the easy ones. When you got this 1
against 1s where you now have
got to take the keeper on.
So I'm going towards Ray Clement.
I think to myself, two options, Paul.
Do it, go round him.
Do I try to take it round and play it
into an empty net or do I play the early
ball, the early pass, because what it is,
I'm just passing the ball really
into the back of the net.
So I decide now as he starts to run
towards me, he starts
to make my decision for me.
So as he's running towards me,
he's not balanced, he's not set.
So I now slide the ball down his left hand
side so he can't get a foot to it,
he can't get a hand to it,
he can't go down in it and the ball
nestled in the back of the net.
And now for me,
as Tony said, summed up what we were all
about, really, and that was a team that we
tried to keep the ball on the ground as
much as possible and play on the ground.
People talk about the passing game today.
Well, it was there in our days.
But the great thing about that,
as Tony says, that was a team goal again
and that's what we're all about.
PAUL: Well, you were exactly.
You were a brilliant team
with a great team spirit.
But thank you for that description.
That is the most brilliant description
of a goal that's fantastic.
DENNIS: I'll never forget it.
PAUL: No, I'm sure you won't.
And of course, Villa
then do win that title.
I should say to listeners,
it was the first time in 71 years I was
looking at some facts
before this interview.
That the last time Villa won it,
previous to that, Captain Scott set out
on his doomed trip
to
the Antarctic, so it gives you an idea of
how long ago it was.
So therefore we find Villa in Europe.
How many of the players had actually
played any European football?
DENNIS: I had, yeah.
Jimmy Rimmer, probably.
PAUL: Not many.
DENNIS: I'd say probably about four,
maybe four players.
Yeah.
PAUL: Wow.
And you'd obviously drawn in the first leg
against Valur Reykjavík, Icelandic team,
who presumably no one knew anything about.
DENNIS: No one knew, they were
an amateur team as well.
But obviously they won their
Championship in Iceland.
We didn't know anything about them,
but that never feared us.
Because if you know too much about
someone,
you might go out there with a bit
of trepidation thinking,
especially as you move through the final,
you get to the final and you're playing
against the team full of internationals.
And that was the way,
all the way through the tournament,
really, because Berlin,
Dynamo Kiev, those teams and they
were full of internationals.
But
it wasn't part of our psych to worry about
the opposition
because this is what Ron Saunders,
he sort of got into us through the way his
psychology worked,
was that don't worry about the opposition,
just concentrate on yourself.
And your quote about
would you bet against us?
That was a great one.
But the one he always put in his notes
in the programme was that if the players
give me 110%, that's all I ask for.
Yeah, but you can't give 110%, Paul.
PAUL: That's a very good quote.
DENNIS: But the thing is, he always put
that in there and you read it.
You think, Ron, what are you doing?
We can't give you that.
PAUL: But, Dennis, do you think
it was an extraordinary achievement?
Of course, what he achieved with you as
a team and everything, do you think he's
still slightly underrated as a manager?
DENNIS: No, I'd be honest, I wouldn't say he was
ever underrated as a manager because
his record speaks for himself.
No, he's not a manager that comes
to thought, like Cloughy, like Paisley,
like Shankly, like Ferguson.
But you look at the modern day game,
you think to yourself, well,
how many other managers
won what he did? Two league cups,
first division Championship.
Obviously, we include them in the European
Cup because it was his team, of course.
So in a ten year spell,
a twelve year spell of ten years, really,
probably being manager of Aston Villa,
he did something that a lot of managers
never get a chance to achieve.
But the other thing is a little bit like
Aston Villa, we've fallen off
the radar around the success.
40 years now, Paul,
since we won those two.
We went on the pitch yesterday,
at Villa Park.
PAUL: Oh, brilliant.
DENNIS: We had a really good day.
We had a celebration day
parade at Villa Park.
So we took the trophies onto the pitch.
We went round the ground showing
the trophies off to the fans.
So you need to get online and have a look
at the fun that went on yesterday.
But no, because we had
that celebration with the club.
They gave us that lovely trophy as
a memento,
but in one sense,
we've fallen off the radar as being
one of the great clubs in the 80s.
So what's got to happen now is
that to bring that back,
you got to get that success, you see.
But Ron got that success and he put it on.
And talking to the fans who were there
when we were part of it, they just say,
we love you guys because you gave it.
PAUL: Well, it's true.
Even in beginning to make this show
and talking,
obviously, my reason for making the show
is as a fan, there's an enormous amount
of affection for all of you,
all of those players,
not just the generation who are old enough
to see it, but the younger
generation have been told about it.
I think legacy is a very important thing
in life and particularly in football.
Dennis, it's been an absolute pleasure
talking to you and I know we're going
to meet again
with Kenny and Tony at the show,
which I'm really looking forward to.
I just want to finish.
Dennis, if I may,
I'm going to ask you seven rapid questions
and I just want your
first immediate answer.
DENNIS: You might be lucky with that!.
PAUL: Maradona or Johann Cruyff?
DENNIS: Maradona.
PAUL: Minder or The Sweeney?
DENNIS:The Sweeney.
PAUL: Which of these two places did
you least like playing at?
The Hawthornes or St Andrews?
DENNIS: The Hawthornes.
No.
Change that round.
No, I like playing at the Hawthornes
because we always won.
So let's say St Andrews because
we didn't always win there.
PAUL: Reykjavík or Berlin?
DENNIS: Both rubbish.
But let me think, it'd have to be Berlin
because Reykjavík was beyond belief.
PAUL: Okay, what means the most to you?
The first division
title or the European Cup?
DENNIS: The First Division Championship.
PAUL: Excellent.
Coming to today,
I think I know the answer to this.
This is today's race for the title.
Man City or Liverpool?
DENNIS: Man City.
It goes against what I feel,
but I just feel like they'll do
it because that's the focus now.
Liverpool's focus, it
's the European Cup and the League,
and they're starting
to lose one or two players.
But I'd have to go
for Man City for the League.
PAUL: Yeah, I know what you mean.
And finally,
did you have a pre match ritual?
Were you superstitious or did you just go
on and treat
it, did you not think about it?
DENNIS: No, I
did have a routine and the routine
was get there for 2pm,
I'd get my ticket sorted out on the gate.
And then it was down for the next hour
to concentrate on getting
ready for the game.
But the superstitions I had, right,
I wore my socks inside out, right.
And before I got the captaincy,
I actually went out last.
Went from being last
out to being first out.
But those two sort of things I did
religiously. On and
the other thing I think you're waiting
for is the swig of brandy, aren't you?
The swig of brandy before the game?
Only in the winter.
PAUL: Dennis, it's been a real pleasure.
I really look forward to seeing you after
the show and thank you for doing what you
did and for chatting and reliving those
memories which we'll do over
the next three weeks with the show.
All the best Dennis, have a good day.
DENNIS: See you later, see you Paul.
PAUL: Dear listeners, if you've enjoyed this
Idiot podcast, please spread the word.