A cup final is a cup final no matter what the competition. And since I experienced my first one – for England in the European under-21 championships, in 1984 I think – I’ve loved them.

I was on the bench for the 1986 FA Cup Final and of course we won the LDV with Blackpool two years ago.

Does that make you complacent? No, if anything it makes me even more excited about this Sunday because I know how exciting it is to be involved and you never know if you will ever get the chance again.

I’m not being pessimistic but you have to treat a cup final like your last. You can’t assume because you’ve been there before, it will happen again.

That’s what I will stress to my players – relish the occasion, it’s not something that comes around too often.

It will be great to see thousands of Blackpool and Southend fans in Cardiff and hopefully lots of families will be there for Mothers Day.

There’s a chance for our players to show what they can do in front of a live TV audience.

I’ve got a lad at Blackpool called Richie Wellens who scored a brilliant goal from 45 yards against Port Vale a couple of weeks ago.

I joked afterwards to everyone that I’d taught him that in training but to be serious it showed the confidence and ability of the player to do that.

Everyone has been taking the Mickey out of him in training, but I don’t know if he will be another Beckham – I don’t think he’s good looking enough. But he has got the ability to be one of our match-winners on Sunday.