Tony Matthews - Baggies Abroad: The Complete Record of West Bromwich Albions Global Travels

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2015

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

Tony Matthews, 2015

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Print ISBN: 978-1-78531-041-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-099-7

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During my time with Albion I travelled thousands of miles and went to countries I would never have visited had I not been a professional footballer.

Between 1977 and 1984 I had the pleasure of playing for the club in UEFA Cup games in Turkey, Portugal, Spain (taking part in a great match against Valencia) and Yugoslavia and in non-competitive fixtures in Bahrain, Canada, China (I hadnt even had a passport before I went there), Denmark, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Switzerland, the USA and even Guernsey and Ireland! And I also played for England B in Czechoslovakia and for the Under-21 side in Bulgaria and East Germany.

Some of these places were superb and besides the daily training sessions and kicking a ball around for a purpose on the field of play, I thoroughly enjoyed all the sight-seeing tours which were arranged by various travel companies and organisations.

When I played overseas I must say that the support for Albion was tremendous. Everywhere I and the team went, there were scores of Baggies fans wearing navy and blue and white tops and scarves and a few odd designer T-shirts as well.

When Albion played in China in 1978, it was still a closed country, in the grip of the Maoist regime and most people over there had never seen a black person. Then, all of a sudden they saw three, myself, Brendon Batson and Laurie Cunningham.

We had a great time over there on and off the pitch and when we went out walking, the Chinese tried to touch our hair. We were taken on cultural tours to museums and saw Chairman Maos embalmed body in a glass case. Nothing to do with football but it was interesting. Yet that sort of thing was generally commonplace if there was enough time, or the manager allowed us a few hours to enjoy ourselves away from football duties.

I can only recall the games I played in when Albion took on overseas opposition. These matches are listed here along with all the many others the club has competed in on foreign soil since way back in 1893.

You can check out all the scores, results and facts in what is another excellent publication, put together by my long-time friend Tony and its one all ardent Baggies fans should include in their collection.

As Tony says, You join the navy to see the world.

I joined Albion and did just that! Happy days. Enjoy the contents of this book. It brings back some great memories for me, especially the games we won and I scored in.

West Bromwich Albion Football Club players, secretary-manager, trainers, doctors, directors and possibly a few supporters first ventured away from the British mainland in April 1893, taking the relatively short trip over to Ireland to play two friendly matches, both of which were unfortunately lost!

Since then the Baggies have visited over 40 different countries, covering virtually all four points of the globe. Some of the trips have been long and arduous but exciting, some have been short and sweet, others boring and several competitive, with activity in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, European Cup Winners Cup, UEFA Cup and the Anglo-Italian Cup, as well as in pre-arranged club tournaments including ones on the Isle of Man, in Spain, in Sweden, over in the USA and also in the former Yugoslavia.

While compiling this latest book on the Baggies my very first, entitled Albion At War, was written and published way back in 1975 I have once again had to check through piles of newspaper cuttings, some loose but many in scrapbooks, thumbed the pages of scores of magazines and matchday programmes, checked various dates, attendances, stats and facts twice over in some cases, thumbed through quite a number of reference books and, I must admit, the old internet has also been used quite a lot; Ive even had to re-check my past entries!

Ive battled on regardless and as always, I must say I have loved every minute of it as memories from the past all came flooding back as I relived those trips to a freezing Utrecht in Holland for Albions first-ever European game; flying to Turkey when we had to change grounds and travel an extra few hundred miles before taking on Galatasaray; going to a tense and nervy Bucharest in Romania; sailing across the Channel to Bruges in Belgium where many Albion fans had to literally run away from rampaging home supporters; travelling, as a co-commentator, behind the Berlin Wall to Carl Zeiss Jena in the then East Germany, taking with me the chairman of the Australian branch of the WBA Supporters Club, Brian Williams; taking a journey to Belgrade before the troubles in Yugoslavia where I also assisted as a summariser on a West Midlands radio station with the BBCs Tim Russon; venturing over to Valencia in Spain, where I saw one of Albions finest-ever away performances; revisiting Switzerland to see the Baggies play FC Zrich when manager Ronnie Allen gave me 200 club pennants to hand out to young Swiss supporters; going to Ireland with Johnny Giles and his team, where I had the pleasure of meeting ex-Albion centre-half Jack Vernon; having a short stay in Rome for an Anglo-Italian Cup game; being invited by the then club secretary Alan Everiss to Sweden in the early 1970s; and flying with the team to Denmark. Wonderful times, never to be forgotten despite some poor results!

Trying to find enough stats and facts to cover each and every game played by Albion abroad, overseas in a foreign country if you like, spanning a period of more than 120 years, from 1893, wasnt easy, especially from times gone by.

But in the end I think I have done a pretty good job, with the help of many fans, even ex-players. And you will notice that I have chosen to make match reports (if the action has merited it) much longer than others.

However, I am certain than there will be a few people around and about who will contact me asking (a) Why didnt you mention this, that and the other? (b) Did you know this happened in that game? and (c) You forgot to say who was injured, dropped, booked, substituted in a specific friendly.

I started asking for information, through various channels, when I commenced typing up the manuscript for this book over 18 months ago, so all I can say, is why contact me now after the pages have gone to print!