I sold my old Ford & arrived at Villa in Big Ron’s Rolls... but I’m still gutted we didn’t win title
SHAUN TEALE came within a whisker of making history and landing the first Premier League title with Aston Villa.
He is now at peace with the fact that both he – and his club – fell short.
But the blow of losing out to Manchester United in 1993 was always softened for the centre-half by the fact he played for Ron Atkinson at Villa Park when the glory days seemed set to return.
Teale had been plucked from nonleague football by Bournemouth just four years earlier – then jumping on a roller-coaster ride in Brum with Mr Bojangles that just stopped short of fulfilling the fairy tale.
The 58-year-old remains a fans’ favourite. Ask him to recall his time at Villa Park and the glint in his eye tells its own tale.
Teale said: “I didn’t believe it at first when I heard Villa were interested – then I met Ron and I wasn’t sure he was, either.
“He came down to the south coast to meet me and said: ‘What are your strong points’? I thought: ‘Surely, you know already Ron, or else why are you signing me?’
“I said: ‘I’m fairly quick, strong, good in the air’.
“His next question was: ‘What car do you drive?’
“I replied: ‘A Ford Orion’.
“He said: ‘You’re not coming to Aston Villa driving that’.
“So, he gave me an allowance. The club was sponsored by
Rover at the time, but didn’t have any spare pool cars. Ron said: ‘Right, here’s £15,000 – go and buy yourself a decent motor’.
“I thought to myself: “What’s going on here?’
“So I sold the Orion, got four grand for that, bought myself a Mercedes and pocketed £8,000.
“I thought to myself: ‘I’m going to like it at Aston Villa’.
“So, I signed and two days later, I travelled up to Birmingham. Ron had me picked up from New Street station in a green Rolls Royce.
Clogging
“A couple of years earlier, I’d been clogging people playing for Weymouth and Southport, and here I was sat in the back of a green Rolls Royce being ferried around Birmingham about to play for Ron at Villa.”
They were leading the title race by seven points at one stage with Dean Saunders and the late Dalian Atkinson lighting up the top flight.
But an injury to Atkinson led to the wheels falling off. Little was he to know it, but that was to be the end of Teale’s flirtation with stardom.
He said:
“Aston Villa’s a big, big football club.
Coming from
Bournemouth it was like a different world.
“Bodymoor Heath was a big expanse of land with a bungalow in the middle. At Bournemouth, we trained near the airport. If you wanted to go to the toilet, you went behind a tree.
“And Ron was probably at his best. Confident, charismatic… he built a side from nothing.
“He cleared the decks. He brought in 13 new players. The genius that was Paul Mcgrath was already there, so was Nigel Spink, but he brought in Mark Bosnich.
“And we should have won it that year.
“Unfortunately, Dalian got injured with four or five matches to go – and we couldn’t win a game. Coventry, Oldham – but the one that hurt was when we went to Blackburn and Gordon Cowans, who’d just left Villa, absolutely destroyed us.
“It was a sorry end to a season that had promised so much.
“For me, it was as good as it got. There’s no way that side fulfilled its potential.
“It was a shame we never lifted the title. As time goes by, you accept you weren’t good enough – it would have been great to have been the first winners of the Premier League.
“But I got to play for Aston Villa on a regular basis – I was more than happy with that.”