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 Morley’s cross for the winner – with Brian Moore’s commentary on the goal emblazoned on a banner across the North Stand at Villa Park celebrating the 1-0 triumph.

Spink, who went on to make 468 appearances for Villa, said: “I didn’t realise he was six yards out but I did know, because that was the goal we warmed up in, it had a little dip of two to three inches where the grass had been worn away.

“As it came on to his right foot it bobbled in that dip and that’s why he gets his leg pulled for scoring with his shin.”

On Wednesday, Villa host Bayern Munich at the top table of European football again.

A 3-0 win at Young Boys opened Villa’s Champions League campaign in style, but the six-time champions are a different proposition. Vincent Kompany’s side are unbeaten this season and put put nine goals past Dinamo Zagreb last month.

The game will be tinged with sadness after the death of Gary Shaw, the 63-year-old passing away after a fall at home.

The 1982 squad have been invited to Villa Park to mark their European triumph, but popular and talented striker Shaw will be missing.

Shaw scored twice in the 2-0 first-round second-leg win at Valur in Iceland, and netted the opener in the 2-0 quarter-final aggregate victory over Dynamo Kyiv.

The Kyiv tie came just a month after manager Ron Saunders quit, following a disagreement with the board, and chief scout Tony Barton taking over for the rest of the season.

He had the trust of the squad, who credit him with maintaining the continuity.

“I didn’t see it coming. I wasn’t aware of the underlying problem Ron had with the board,” said Spink. “He wanted to develop the squad from winning the championship [in 1981] and take it further. It just didn’t work out.

“He decided he was going to go and it was a brave decision, given what we went on to win.

“It was a shock when he left, but Tony kept everything ticking along. Senior players played their part as well, keeping everybody in check, and Tony just continued to train and set the team up, just as Ron had. That’s why it didn’t all fall apart.”

Saunders, who had guided them to the title just nine months before, was missed though.

“I went around to his house,” says right-back Kenny Swain. “We’d played a midweek game and on the way back I bought a bottle of brandy from this club we’d be in and I thought I’d drop it in on the way home.

“So we get a taxi to near his house, I walked down his drive and I put a little note on it saying: ‘Thank you for everything.'”

Swain did not hear back, although saw Saunders a few times in the future, but the pressing issue became that night in Rotterdam.

Villa were underdogs, while Bayern already had three European Cups in their cabinet and few gave Barton’s boys a chance.

“There was a focus and a belief that you’re going to have to be special to beat us,” said Swain, who left a few months after the win to join Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest.

“Personally, I felt at my peak. We were so hard to beat and so finely tuned for these games. After Ron left, the focus, the consistency, the spirit and the belief didn’t change at all.

“They produced a couple of scares but I vividly remember one moment down our left. They managed to get a cross in and, because I was retreating back towards our goal, I ended up just outside the six-yard box.

“This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post and Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking: ‘This is different gravy.'”

Yet Villa held on to write their names in the history books.

Spink said: “It was unbelievable because it was almost impossible to take in what we had just achieved.

“I remember looking over and Bayern were shell-shocked. They were all sitting on the pitch absolutely stunned.”

Swain agrees, having also stumbled on the crestfallen Bayern dressing room on his way out of De Kuip.

“Looking at the enormity of the occasion and the achievement, I was walking along the corridor and the door of the Munich dressing-room door was slightly ajar,” he said.

“I could see there was somebody still in there and there were kits and socks on the dressing-room floor. It was Rummenigge and the captain [Paul Breitner] sitting together with their heads in their arms, looking down.

“They both looked up in shock, so I said: ‘Hello, best of luck – maybe see you next year’ and they were absolutely desolate. These were two of the leading players in Europe.

“There’s me just innocuously opening the door and then seeing these two sitting there, just these two big Munich stars.

“The achievement is in the history books and can never go away. While you still enjoy life on this earth, it is unbelievable for the club and every player. It was a moment to savour.”