WHEN I met John McMaster recently he was sitting on the couch in his living room in a T-shirt and shorts trying to rest his left foot in a basin of warm water.

The foot that once helped bring down Bayern Munich and Real Madrid is now causing John himself pain after a minor injury.

Eric Black's physical discomfort diminishes every time he's out of work. He's had back problems since he was a teenager and when he's in a job it means driving to grounds all over England. His driving position aggravates the damaged vertebrae and increases the suffering. He's not actively looking for work until the summer so he can give his spine a rest for a while.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Aberdeen beating Real Madrid to win the European Cup Winners Cup. Alex McLeish reflects on the occasion it not in terms of time but in weight: "That was five stone ago," he laughs. Time has thickened a few of the Gothenburg lads' waistlines, while for others the hair is thinner.

Ross County players sometimes watch Neale Cooper hirpling around a training field and decide to give their assistant manager some cheek. "They say to me 'did you really play in a team that beat Real Madrid?'," he says. What's amazing for many of us isn't that Cooper once helped bring down Real Madrid, but that it happened three decades ago. The team on that rain-lashed night had an average age of just 23. Their manager, plain old Alex Ferguson back then, was 41.

Later this month the first of the Gothenburg Greats will turn 60: Stuart Kennedy (an injured, unused substitute in the final but a cornerstone of the campaign) is the oldest of them. McMaster and Willie Miller are just behind at 58; Gordon Strachan and Doug Rougvie are 56; Mark McGhee and Peter Weir 55; Jim Leighton and McLeish 54; and Dougie Bell (like Kennedy injured for the final but crucial) 53.

And then there are the group of younger players who used to be referred to as "the kids": Neil Simpson, now 51; John Hewitt 50; and Black and – the youngest of them all – Cooper, both 49.

Gothenburg nostalgia is in full flow. Weir and McMaster were invited to a fans' event in Glasgow last night and Leighton, Kennedy, Rougvie, Miller, McLeish, Cooper, Simpson, Bell and Black will be at a celebratory dinner in Aberdeen this evening. Only Strachan, McGhee and Hewitt couldn't make either event. It's been five years since so many of them were together, when they marked the last significant anniversary.

Since then they've lost their great old trainer, Teddy Scott, who passed away last year. Knocks and minor ailments aside, time has been kind to them. In Gothenburg itself a 22-year-old supporter, Phillip Goodbrand, collapsed in the Ullevi stadium and died.

The man who handed Miller the cup, the Uefa president at the time, Artemio Franchi, was killed three months later in a car accident. Real's goalscorer, Juanito, also died in a car crash in 1992 aged only 37. Thankfully Real's manager at the time, the great Alfredo Di Stefano, has come through recent health problems and is now 86.

In the course of researching his intimate love letter to that team, the book Glory In Gothenburg, Richard Gordon made the astonishing discovery that the side which started against Real Madrid had never previously been picked by Ferguson, and played together in only one further game.

"The Gothenburg team only ever played together in the Cup Winners' Cup final and 10 days later against Rangers, when they won the Scottish Cup final only to have their ears burned by Ferguson calling them 'a disgrace' for playing so poorly. Ferguson, explosively impulsive, quickly apologised. That 11-man unit had never previously been selected because Kennedy was a certain starter before his cruel injury."

One by one, Gordon picked them all off for his superb book. "They were all happy to sit down," he says. "They all clearly enjoyed just sitting down and going over those days. Their eyes lit up, they had smiles on their faces as they remembered incidents, relationships, games and experiences. They needed a wee nudge sometimes, and then the stories came.

"They are far better interviewees than they would have been 30 years ago. They are far more rounded individuals. John McMaster, he was a coach for a while, but to augment that he's worked in polling and research and insurance. He's got involved in scouting.

"Peter Weir ran a newsagents'. He drove a baggage recovery truck for Glasgow airport before getting back into the game. They've gone out and experienced life. They're mellower. What they all have is that great realisation that it was such a special time and they are prepared to share it. They're telling stories now that they would never have told us back then. What really struck me was how amenable they all were. They were all great once you finally tracked them down."

As a squad, they were together from the arrival of Weir in 1981 until the end of Kennedy's career through that knee injury in 1983 and the departure of Strachan, McGhee and Rougvie in 1984. Geography, career moves and family commitments have pulled them in different directions.

Strachan has the Scotland job. Miller and McGhee later managed Aberdeen and are still in high-profile work as a pundit and Scotland's assistant manager respectively. Leighton, Simpson and Weir still work for Aberdeen. Cooper is at Ross County. McLeish and Black will be back in football soon enough. Hewitt and Rougvie are in the oil industry. Kennedy runs a guesthouse in Grangemouth. Bell is a social worker. McMaster scouts for Swansea City.

Rougvie was the one Gordon found hardest to track down. Even the rest of the team didn't know where he was. No-one had an up-to-date number. He had been in Dubai for a while. Gordon put out an appeal on Twitter and one of his followers led him to Rougvie, who was back working in Aberdeen. "The bizarre thing was, having finally tracked him down folk started saying to me 'oh aye, he's been coming to Pittodrie for ages'," Gordon says. "How come nobody knew? He had slipped under the radar, quietly sat in the stand, watched the game and disappeared again. He came to the launch of the book, he's done some signings and he was at Simmie's testimonial [in August]. It's lovely that he's back in the fold. For a club like Aberdeen that's really important.

"I've been at a few events with these guys. They tell stories they've told each other a hundred times but it's almost as though they're hearing them for the first time, especially if they've had a couple of beers. And then somebody remembers something and that sparks something else off. The camaraderie and the bond that group of players have is as strong as any team the world over. It's incredible. When they're all together they just become kids again."

The poignant, unspoken reality is they may never all be together again. The relationship between Ferguson and Leighton will never heal and over the years there have been issues between the manager and Strachan, McGhee and Black, resulting in distance but eventually peace. When McGhee was Aberdeen manager he sacked Leighton. It's a horrible thought that the Gothenburg boys, that wonderful team, may never again sit and enjoy each other's company over a beer.

All of them had a smile over the memories this week, though. It was just like old times as they prepared to savour their moment, only to have Ferguson gatecrashing. They'll toast "Furious" this weekend, every one of them freely acknowledging he was the manager who shaped them and the man who delivered Gothenburg. Whatever issues some have had with him, most would agree with McMaster's view of the man. In his mobile phone list he has Ferguson typed in as "genius".