The day I assisted Paul Birch for a 40 yard screamer!

No this wasn’t a dream it actually happened.  It was during a charity match in aid of Football Aid on Sunday 13^th of May 2007.  I was playing football at Villa Park alongside the likes of Morley, Cowan’s, Birch and Burke, it was a dream come true.  My part in the goal was pretty simple, I laid off a sideways pass near the half way line, Birchy strolled forward a few yards and then boom! He smashed the ball and it flew into the back of the net like a rocket.  Granted the keeper was someone similar to me – just your average wannabe footballer – but a premier league keeper would have struggled to get anything on this shot.  To be fair to Birchy he obviously appreciated the quality in my pass ;-) because he tried to set me up from a corner to repay the favour, sadly I blazed over (Heskey style) and failed to net in the Holte (that would have capped off the perfect day).

It’s very sad that Paul Birch passed away at just 46 years of age on 2^nd February 2009 (5th year anniversary is a week tomorrow), he was great pro who served my beloved Villa for 10 years.  I am glad to of met him, he seemed like a genuine guy who was keen for us all to enjoy our day.  I remember when he played for Villa and he always seemed to give 100%.  I was quite young in those days, to give you some idea how young I remember he was one of the last stickers I needed to fill the Villa pages of my Panini sticker book, and I also remember confusing him with Kevin Gage – they were the only two players sporting blond perms.  A side issue but bring back the Panini club! I met Tony Daley in their!

It’s amazing really that even when these top professional’s age they are still a class above the likes of you and me.  We spend most of our time singling out players as being useless and thinking we could do better (as I used to do with the likes of Jlloyd Samuel, and as everyone has done with Heskey at one point or another) but the truth is they would make us all look useless in your typical Sunday league match.  Unfortunately despite this realisation I will still have a pop at anyone that I feel isn’t giving their all, or that has annoyed me for one reason or another as you will probably notice from my blog.

This isn’t an affiliate link, and I am in no way profiting or making any kind of cash from this but I would highly recommend a Football Aid match as a present for any die hard Villan as I mentioned it was a dream come true (but is quite expensive), check out: http://www.footballaid.com/events/teams/19/aston-villa.html