VILLA KILLER OVER A DOG

IT was a cold Armistice night, just five years after the end of World War I, when Aston Villa’s Tommy Ball went into the front garden looking for his dog.

The centre-half had just returned from the pub with his wife to a cottage in Perry Barr, Birmingham.

Ball unlocked the front door, allowing the small white pooch to go outside for a run.

When it didn’t respond to his calls, the defender checked with his wife Beatrice as to its whereabouts.

The 23-year-old defender strode out into the darkness.

Moments later, he was shot in the chest.

Hearing the crack of the gun, his wife rushed from the back kitchen.

She ran to his side, the dying man gasping “Oh, Beat, he has shot me,” before fatally collapsing.

Mrs Ball struggled to take in what had taken place when a second shot whistled over her shoulder.

The frightened woman ran to the next cluster of cottages.

Returning to the house with help, she came face-to-face with George Stagg, a retired policeman who was also their landlord and next-door neighbour.

“It’s only me, Mrs Ball,” he said. “Don’t be afraid”, before adding that the gunfire had been by accident.

“No, it wasn’t,” came the reply. “Or you would not have fired at me.”

The next day, police found two used gun cartridges under the grate in Stagg’s house — and promptly charged him with murder.

Tommy Ball (above) was just starting out on a career with Villa.

It didn’t take the police long to uncover what appeared to be an uneasy relationship between the two neighbours. Stagg had served notice on the Balls to quit their property. They were asked to leave in August and still had not done so by the end of November.

Stagg was also driven to distraction by what he perceived to be their dog’s constant barking.

The charge was a formality. Stagg’s defence was that it had been an accident.

The prosecution used expert witnesses to prove the fatal shot had been delivered just three feet from the Villa player, after a heated exchange over the dog.

It took the jury little more than 90 minutes to find the defendant guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death.

The motive was shrouded in mystery. Reports suggested that Stagg was envious of the footballer, who was out drinking on a night which would have rekindled bitter memories for an ex-army veteran shot and gassed in World War I and that the dog’s barking tipped him over the edge.

But Stagg never did pay for the crime with his life. Shortly after his sentence, a new Labour government took office and, worried about miscarriages of justice, commuted three death sentences of which the 45-year-old’s was one.

But Stagg did spend the majority of his time in mental institutions until his death at the age of 87 in 1966.

Villa’s season collapsed around them in 1923-24 — they slipped down the Division One table and were beaten by Newcastle United in the FA Cup Final.

Ball’s murder destabilised Villa — and was a blow that saw them lose their position at the vanguard of English football.

And all because of a row over a dog...