Bobby Who?

A pocket battleship of a striker in his day. Signed for Villa at he start of the 1959-60 season (so you can forgive me a little for not immediately recognising him, I hope?), from Wolves (so he had made a giant step in the right direction there then), scoring 20 league goals (incredibly putting him third that season behind Gerry Hitchens, 23, and Peter McParland 22) as Villa won the Second Division title.
I'm not doing this from memory. The record books show that Dundonian Thomson then hit 12 league goals for each of the next three seasons before moving to Blues. 70 goals in 172 appearances was his final tally- blummin' good stuff at a goal every two-and-a-half games.
Anyway, I digress.
I held my hand out and said to Mr Thomson: "Pleased to make your acquintance"- or some such words of greeting.
Thomson shook his head and said: "I'm not shaking your bloody hand. You never put me in the Mail's 22 legends!"
I was taken aback but after a period of banter it soon becomes apparent that Bobby was only half-joking.
"But my record was better than Gary Shaw's", he says. "And I keep telling Shaw that on the golf days!"
He was right enough. Shaw hit 80 in 212 appearances but yet made it into my selection (a two day pull-out special which I am led to believe sold reasonably well).
The brief was to pick 22 players whom we could refer to as "Heroes of the Holte". It had to be no earlier than the 1950s, had to span all six decades fairly evenly- obviously up to the present day.
My point is this though- ask 100 fans their 22, and you'll get 100 different answers..
My good friend Rob Bishop, who writes the Villa programme and whom I travel to away matches, wrote a book last year where he had to pick ten of the best Villa players in the Premier League players.
East enough you might have thought? Wrong. Although all bar a very small section went for Paul McGrath and Gordon Cowans, the differences in opinion and the cross-section of names delievered was astounding.
That is just 15 years. So how do you cover well nigh 60 years?
I plumped for the obvious from the 50s: Dixon, McParland and Hitchens. I grouped Hateley and Aitken from the 1960s. From the 70s the usual suspects: Gray, Little and Rimmmer. From the 80s: Cowans, Mortimer, Morley, Shaw, Withe and Evans; from the 90s: McGrath, Yorke, Platt, Daley and Southgate and from the 2000s: Merson, Mellberg and Barry.
Not a bad grouping but look at the names I missed out: 1950s: Blanchflower, Sims, Martin and Dugdale (and Thomson I hasten to now add), the 1960s: Crowe, Burrows and Anderson; the 1970s: Graydon, Gidman and Lochhead; the 1980s: half of the European Cup winning side: Spink, Williams, Swain, McNaught and Bremner; the 1990s: Saunders, Townsend, Houghton and Staunton and from the 2000s: crowd favourite Ian Taylor, no less.
It was an impossible task and from some of the letters we received at the Mail you'd think I had committed treason.
We left on very good terms after the match that day at Fulham. That's me and Bobby Thomson.
"I should have been in that list though!", he added.