Second in my ongoing series remembering some of the more frivolous events I experienced following the Dons at Pittodrie, more often than not from the Merkland End in the early-mid 1990s (link to the earlier blog below).
4) Willie Miller’s Testimonial
4th December, 1990
There are three things I mainly recall about this event. Firstly, do you remember the posters that were on the go promoting the match? They were sensational! Willie’s Aberdeen team were going to play a World Cup XI – and what an XI they were going to be! The pick of the players from the previous summers Italia 90. Incredible. I remember the posters vividly. They featured Roger Milla, Gazza and Schillaci! Can you imagine that?! All those greats coming to Aberdeen to honour our greatest ever player. I think there was also a German player advertised – Klinnsman or Mathaus maybe. Whoever, it was going to be absolutely fantastic. But, they couldn’t possibly all come, could they?
No, of course they couldn’t. None of them did.
And I think deep down, we all knew that, didn’t we?
Here’s the team the World Cup XI fielded that night if you’re interested (thanks to the incredible AFC Heritage website):
World Cup XI: Bruce Grobbelaar, Dennis Irwin (Danny McGrain), Freddie Van der Hoorn, David O’Leary, Glenn Hysen, Sergei Baltacha, Bryan Robson, Neil Webb, Kenny Dalglish, Mark Hughes (Steve Archibald), Hans Gillhaus (Charlie Nicholas)
It’s not a shocker by any means but… Come On! Freddie van der Hoorn seems to have been selected by virtue of hailing from a country that’s appeared in a World Cup.
My second memory is of Willie Miller scoring an own goal. In his own testimonial. I had a good view from behind the goal and he looked genuinely mortified (as well he should if he gave the go-ahead for those posters!)
Finally, when Willie was doing his lap of honour round the stadium, caught up in the moment, I stupidly threw my Dons scarf at him. He didn’t pick it up so I got a steward to give me it back.
5) A character: Eskimo
Early-mid 90s
Eskimo was a chap who we saw every home game without fail, sitting in the Main Stand, lower tier in the corner near the Merkland. Always on his own, he would wear a Parker jacket fully zipped up also with the furry hood up so you couldn’t see his face (or head) deliberately obscuring his own view. Hence we gave him the nickname ‘Eskimo’.
6) The Mark Hateley Incident
24th September, 1994
Ironically, a previous blog piece I did was about the trouble we got into trying to ramp up the atmosphere for an Aberdeen-Rangers match. This was that match! ( https://theychoppeddownahill.wordpress.com/2018/04/25/the-good-the-bad-and-pittodrie/ )
For a while in the early 90s, we would get player autographs after the matches. By this point, we were a bit old for that but we thought we’d hang around after all the same to see if there was any banter, it being an Aberdeen-Rangers game. So we were then when Mark Hateley got ‘attacked’ and it made the national news.
The newspaper reports I’ve just read from that time paint a rather different picture to what I saw. They say he was signing autographs for disabled fans as he got on the bus when a man approached him and launched an unprovoked attack. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
What I recall was near the players entrance (next to the club shop), Hateley was getting into a CAR, NOT signing autographs, when he exchanged words with a young lad who then kicked at his shin and ran away laughing. Hateley then went inside the main entrance and we didn’t think any more about it.
UNTIL WE GOT HOME! WOW! Unbelievably, the incident was the main news story on both the BBC’s and ITV’s teletext services. This was unheard of. To get a Scottish football story to the top line was rare but for it to feature our beloved Aberdeen was an once-in-a-lifetime event. I think I even called one of mates to let them know. On a landline, of course.
Writing about telephoning mates on landlines to tell them about Ceefax – this blog is really going for the youth demographic, isn’t it?
Hope you enjoyed reading it.
https://theychoppeddownahill.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/memories-from-the-merkland-end-1/
They Chopped Down A Hill 