The Cup That Fears

My first real memory of football of any kind happened in May1980.

I’ve always said I arrived late to the party, but more than made up for it when I got there; a bit like Ian Wright.

As a child, my own prehistoric age had admittedly gone on a little too long, and just as I was putting the plastic dinosaurs back in their box for the last time, along game a space adventure from a galaxy far, far away. I willingly jumped ship and followed Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan on their adventure, making T-Rex and Stegosaurus extinct again as a new set of figurines now stood atop the kitchen’s Flotex carpet. If dinosaurs had ruled my earth, then Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon took me to another one completely.

Football never stood a chance and didn’t get a look in. Until, that was, May 1980.

Two things happened that month, and across just eleven days. Firstly, I watched my first ever football match. It was a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon, and I was at my grandparents’ house as everyone got ready to watch ‘the game’. I’d not noticed this strange phenomenon before, although it had apparently happened every year previously, but this time, for reasons unknown, I got completely caught up in it.

There was a lot of build-up, which only seemed to add to the occasion and anticipation. I was hooked by two things immediately. Firstly, one of the two teams (West Ham United) were not only massive underdogs from a lower division – whatever that meant - but also had a player (Paul Allen) who was just seventeen years old and thus the youngest ever to play in this FA Cup Final, as everyone kept calling it. And secondly, the other team (Arsenal) had a player who was named Young (Willie). That was enough for me. I was in. And those two were to play quite a role later on.

Like many first games, I don’t remember much. I didn’t even know it at the time but both teams wore their change kits (and I still love it when that happens today) and they looked amazing in the bright sunshine on this huge green baize at this big stadium with two huge and impressive towers.

Blowing Bubbles

West Ham quickly became the team I wanted to win that day. They were the underdog, remember? and I was used to backing the small guys against an evil Empire, but they didn’t play like one and soon took the lead when a cross-cum-shot found the head of Trevor Brooking who diverted it into the net. It seemed pretty normal at the time, although I later discovered that there had probably been a greater chance of me seeing a real dinosaur that day than Brooking scoring with a header.

I don’t recall anything else about the game until nearer the end, as I shouted myself hoarse in an attempt to keep the Gunners away from the Hammer’s (I was learning a whole new language too) goal.

Then, Paul Allen – and all of his seventeen years – broke clear on the halfway line and was clean through on goal, to surely seal the win but also make even more history. There was no stopping him, not legally, but big Willie Young found a way.

A callous trip denied the certain goal, made Young a villain every bit as bad as Darth Vader and led to the change in the rules where a ‘professional’ foul would warrant a red card. As it was, Young was booked, West Ham only got a free-kick, and I was left with an incredible shame that someone sharing my name could do such a terrible thing. Not that it mattered, as West Ham still won, lifted the cup from the Duchess of Kent and I was now a fully fledged football fan.

Eleven days later, my parents took me to the opening night of The Empire Strikes Back. Two hours, and one traumatising confession later, I staggered out of the cinema – utterly stunned.

‘He can’t really be his Dad, can he?’

This would take some getting over. And I would need football now more than ever.

It’ll All Be All White

I was reminded of this match at the weekend.

Fulham, in all-white, played Southampton, in yellow and blue, the same colours worn that splendid afternoon in 1980 that had been by gateway to the beautiful game.

It was also the FA Cup but this time the fifth round. And it was also 1-0 to the underdog from a league below. The Saints even wore a nostalgic kit of their own that mirrored the one they wore when they – as a second-tier club – beat Manchester United in the 1976 final.

Because that day is still – even now – probably the best day of most of their fans’ lives.

For many other clubs it will be the same.

Sunderland fans, who’ve had a lot to cheer recently and a much more current, amazing win at Wembley, will still look back at 1973 when Jim Montgomery made the save of the season, and possibly of football full stop, to deny Leeds United and win the Cup.

Spurs, when they did used to win games, seemed to win it whenever a year ended in the number one. I still vividly recall the second ever Cup Final I watched in 1981 when I was now a veritable expert on the game and Tommy Hutchinson scored at both ends, and in the replay – remember them? – Ricky Villa scored one of the most memorable winners ever.

And so on. Liverpool’s 1965 FA Cup win arguably kick-started their period of greatness, while Arsenal dined out on Cup wins for years.

Even last May, Crystal Palace’s ‘best ever season’ was because they won the Cup. As devalued as it’s become it still holds a special place for the fans, who’d never swap winning the final at Wembley for a ‘top-four or five finish’. And even though they eventually lost in 1990, many of their fans will never forget Ian Wright arriving late to that one too and putting an indelible stamp on the day.

For many, a Cup win – and maybe even a final – will be the pinnacle of their fandom.

Mexican Waves

Incredibly sad, I know, but whilst waiting for the microwave to heat a chilli con carne on Sunday, I challenged myself to list every Cup Final since 1970. I’d long ago become an aficionado and rattled off the seventies in less than twenty seconds. The eighties – where it all began for me – was even easier. I’d done the nineties by the time the plate started rattling but the final few of that decade had really slowed me in my tracks. And after 1999, I could barely name a winner let alone their opponents.

It pinpointed for me the start of the demise, as the rapid growth of the Premier League and Champions League had diminished the Cup’s place and prestige, at first in a subtle and largely unnoticeable way but making it, year-on-year, that little less important for clubs.

It’s not really stopped since.

Bringing the semi-finals to Wembley was – for me anyway – the beginning of the end. It was announced in 2003 that the new stadium would host them all after it reopened (it was one way of covering the vast overspend against the budget) and this removed one of the staples of the Cup’s magic. Getting all the way to the national stadium was what it was all about and now you could be ‘going to Wembley’ just by reaching a semi-final (or later by drawing Spurs away). Que Sera.

The reduction, and finally, abolition of replays has been another blow. Not just for fans but for the lower league clubs themselves, who can change their financial landscape with a good cup run but that now have fewer chances to make that happen and have to pray for an away tie rather than a home one when they make the draw. The draw for which, once, I hid in the school toilets with a transistor radio to find out who my club would play in a very rare fifth round appearance.

Maybe that last memory proves that I’m just stuck in the past, and the FA Cup is one of the last of football’s dinosaurs; a relic of another time that just doesn’t know it’s time is up.

And maybe FIFA, UEFA or even people closer to home are already dreaming of the ‘next big thing’; their version of a new ice age that will kill it off all together. Shame, after 155 years, but T-Rex had a long longer and it still didn't save them.

For fans, and the clubs themselves, that are not part of the elite - and in a weekend where Southampton and Port Vale overcame the odds and Premier League opponents to get closer to Wembley - the cup is one way to create moments, and money, that are both vital to their longer-term futures, but that is being existentially threatened by the greed emanating from the top.

Incidentally, West Ham United, in May 1980, was also the last time a team from outside the top league won ‘the Cup’. It had happened quite a few times before that.

It might never happen again.

But at least we’ll all still have the memories.