Sibling rivalry was fierce in the Whittingham household – at least until the point at which Peter started to smash his older brother’s records.
Football was the sport in which Peter really excelled, making over 500 combined appearances for Cardiff City and Aston Villa, and Friday night’s FA Cup fifth-round tie between the clubs will mark almost five years since his death.
Peter would watch James play for Coventry City’s academy before he was old enough to take part, but quickly overtook him and was eventually offered a youth training scheme (YTS) contract at Villa, while his older brother concentrated his efforts outside football.
Recalling what it was like to have a younger brother who was better than him at football, James laughed fondly and said: “Oh, it was terrible! In my last year at junior school I held the record for 37 goals or something. And then two years later, he got 100! He’d score 11 goals in one game and do silly things like that.”
Peter’s sporting talent did not stop at football, which prompted James, who was born two years before him to the day, to jokingly christen his brother “golden balls”.
“One of the things people often don’t realise about Peter is that he was really talented at so many things, not just football,” said James. “Particularly racket sports – tennis, table tennis – and cricket. He played rugby at school. He was a really gifted sportsman and after he retired from football he was playing a lot of golf.
“I always used to joke that he was the ‘golden balls’ of the family, but we were very close, as kids and also as adults even though our lives became very different. I was just super proud of him, we all were.”
That pride was evident during an hour in which tears fell down the face of James, as he shared some of his memories of Peter ahead of what will be an emotionally-charged evening for the Whittingham family who have been invited to the FA Cup tie as guests of Villa.
Peter died aged 35 on March 18, 2020 after falling down stairs and hitting his head while watching England play Wales in the Six Nations with friends. His wife Amanda was pregnant with their second child Seb at the time, while his eldest son Will was just two.
“The fact the Six Nations comes around every year does bring that back,” said 42-year-old James, who works in investment. “Particularly when it’s England v Wales.
“In some ways the five years have gone quite quickly – the memories of growing up with him, being with him, his humour, his disposition, that still feels very close to me and the family, and it still feels like it’s omnipresent. But the reason why it also feels longer than five years is how much his boys have grown up.”
Peter was part of Villa’s FA Youth Cup-winning side that beat an Everton team featuring Wayne Rooney in the final, before making 66 first-team appearances for the club and earning 17 England Under-21 caps.
He joined Cardiff in 2007 in what may rank as the best £350,000 the club has ever spent, as Peter went on to score 96 goals in 457 appearances. The midfielder had a habit of netting spectacular goals with his ‘wand’ of a left foot and he won the Championship golden boot after hitting 20 in the 2009-10 season.
During his time in Wales, Peter helped Cardiff reach the 2008 FA Cup final and won promotion to the Premier League in 2013. He was twice named the club’s player of the year and was voted into three Championship teams of the year, as well as being included in the Championship team of the decade.
“One of the biggest accolades for Peter was being picked in the team of the year stuff that was voted for by other professionals,” said James. “His old team-mate, Michael Chopra, said he was a footballer’s footballer and that would have meant a lot to him.”
Two years after Peter’s death, Cardiff retired the number seven shirt as a tribute and his memory will be marked by a group of Villa fans who crowd-funded to have a banner made in his honour that will be displayed at Friday night’s game. The remaining proceeds from the banner have been donated to the Peter Whittingham Foundation that James established with Amanda, his sister Rachel and mother Sally.
“The reaction after the draw was made has been really lovely,” said James. “Myself and my eldest two children will be there. I think Amanda and the boys will be there. My mum will probably be going and my sister and her children. So there will be a lot of the family at the game.
“With all this, the family, as much as possible, has tried to make things about celebrating Peter, his life and his achievements. He’s not the kind of guy who would have wanted us all to sit around. He loved life and he was always very witty, always had a smile on his face. He was glass half full and that’s how he would have wanted us to be.
“He lived his dream, really. He played football for a living and woke up every day and did what he wanted to do, what he always wanted to do. I can’t stress enough his love of football and his love for his family.”
This will not be the first time Cardiff and Villa have faced each other since Peter’s death. His former clubs took part in a memorial match in 2022 that launched the foundation, which has raised £150,000 for three charities – Winston’s Wish, Cardiff City in the community and a sports bursary at King Henry VIII School in Coventry.
“The other thing we’ve had discussions on, with some Cardiff fan associations, is the possibility of a statue of Peter outside the club’s ground,” said James. “It’s something we’re exploring with Cardiff and it would obviously be a multi-year fundraising process. It’s just trying to think what we can do that is positive because that’s why the foundation was established.”
Peter had only retired from football around 18 months before his death and it is the thought of what his brother could have turned his talents to next that James finds particularly upsetting.
“The question was always how he was going to spend his time after playing and something I learned at his memorial from speaking to people was that he was planning to go back into doing some coaching with younger players,” said James.
“That’s one of the things that disappoints me a lot because I think he would have been great at it. I think he’d be able to offer a lot in terms of insights and I think he was quite good at picking a player. He would have been really good at it and immersed himself in it, as well as the family and the boys. That’s the hard thing, all the time you are missing and what he could have done.”
