Saturday’s Finals finished West London 4-1 Viva Capri in the West End Saturday League Division One Cup at Reynolds Field and Arsenal 3-2 Hull City in The FA Cup at Wembley.
The attendances, respectively, were 8 and 89,345. One of those Finals had a global TV audience of around half a billion.
I’ve now seen 42 FA Cup Finals, 447 FA Cup matches, 377 Wembley matches, 182 matches this season and a total of 6,647 from my first as a nine-year-old in short trousers in 1960. Or was it 1860?
I thought Arsenal v Hull City was one of the better Finals. The last team to win 3-2 after being two goals down were Everton in 1966 (v Sheffield Wednesday). I had a feeling the Gunners would win, even after they went 2-0 down so quickly. They have now featured in 18 Finals and won eleven of them, equalling the records held by Manchester United.
Saturday’s attendance of 89,345 was the best for five years. But the highest for a Final at the new Wembley is still the 89,874 who saw Cardiff City v Portsmouth in 2008.
I went this time with my friend Mark from Chepstow. He came on the train from Bristol to Paddington, about two minutes’ walk from my hotel, and we left for Wembley at 3.30pm. It was a brainwave travelling back via Wembley Central: no queue and the train half empty.
I had two more Finals on Sunday and again it was one at Reynolds Field (Hanwell Town FC) and one at Wembley. Maro v West London Reserves in the West End Sunday AM Premier Division Challenge Shield in the morning had 15 minutes of stoppage time but it wasn’t due to injuries. It was because they only had one ball and players kept trying shots that ended up on the road behind one of the goals. It was lucky the ball didn’t land on an open lorry and was taken miles away.
Maro, in red and black stripes, scored the only goal of the contest with a first-half penalty.
There was no extra-time and I watched half-an-hour of athletics from Shanghai on TV back at the hotel before taking the tube to Wembley for the Conference Premier Play-Off Final between Cambridge United and Gateshead. I had a seat in the press box for that one, which kicked-off at 4pm, and had a chicken roll and coffee in the lounge before going out into the bright sun.
Gateshead were voted out of the Football League in May 1960, six months before my first match, and they are still waiting to get back after losing 2-1 yesterday. ‘The Heed’ pulled a goal back to set up an exciting finish and missed narrowly with two headers in the dying seconds. Well done to ‘The U’s’, though. I think a place like Cambridge needs a Football League club.
I reckon I have another six matches to go this season. Then it’s the World Cup!
Twitter: @thebarberfan
