Listening to Billy Connolly through headphones, Nigel Spink had no idea what was about to happen. The 23-year-old goalkeeper had played just once for Aston Villa - more than two years previously - and had no expectation to feature in the biggest game in the club's history. It was quiet on the bus travelling to face Bayern Munich in the 1982 European Cup final in Rotterdam, players wrapped in their own thoughts and listening to their new gifts.
"I remember everybody being in their new suits, looking great and listening to music on our new Sony Walkmans," recalls Spink. "It was unbelievable. Sony had given us a Walkman each - the old-fashioned, cassette-driven one - for reaching the final.
"I had a Billy Connolly cassette because I remember uncontrollable laughter - he just makes me laugh. "Psychology didn't go that deep back then, it was more that's what I fancied. I wasn't thinking 'Oh yeah, that will relax me', because I wasn't nervous.
I didn't think I'd get on [the pitch] so there were no nerves to be had." Yet, after nine minutes, goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer's shoulder injury forced him off and Spink came on, playing for the first time since a 2-1 defeat at Nottingham Forest on 26 December in 1979. "For a few minutes there was the hullabaloo of getting me on, but the game restarted and I just didn't think about it.
It was a dry night and the gloves felt good on the ball," he tells BBC Sport. And in the 67th minute Spink watched from one end as Peter Withe converted Tony Morle.
