The melancholy magic of the FA Cup

I watched the FA Cup final on Saturday. The timing worked well for me to watch it as I have been confined to the house isolating after being infected by covid.

A generic picture (by me) of the Wembley Stadium arch...

I have actually made more of an effort to watch the FA Cup final in the last few years. I enjoyed last year's game when Leicester won the Cup for the first time in this history. This year's contest was less exciting on paper, with both Liverpool and Chelsea winning it multiple times in the past and also being two of the really big teams in the league. FA Cup finals are always better when the less successful clubs get a tilt at winning. 

Back in 2019, I blogged about how the first FA Cup final after my Dad died was an unexpected moment where I keenly felt his loss. That feeling has diminished somewhat over the last couple of years, but it's still something missing from the occasion. Dad would always watch the cup final and talk to me on the phone about it afterwards, even when for several years I wasn't particularly fussed about it and hadn't bothered watching. 

People talk about the "magic" of the FA Cup and really what they mean is nostalgia. As I watched Liverpool and Chelsea punch and counterpunch their way to a 0-0 draw, extra time and penalties, I remembered watching the various cup finals when I was a kid. It made me feel melancholic as the nostalgia washed over me. 

Cup final day was always a big day in our house. In the 1980s it was one of those very rare times that a football match was broadcast live on TV. It almost seems silly now - my time off isolating has been spent watching live football from almost every level in the top five tiers of English football - but back then there was the Cup final, and that was about it.

It was also on both main channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it felt like a real moment when the nation stopped to watch the football. (They did that again this year, but we have way more than 4 channels now so it dominates the schedules less.) We always used to watch it on the BBC, often starting with the build up before lunch time. Some years we would switch over to ITV for the bit presented by "Saint and Greavsie" (Ian St.John and Jimmy Greaves, who had a weekly football chat show on Saturdays). But normally we ignored the ITV output. 

Those were halcyon days for FA Cup finals. I don't remember the one from 1984, when we had just moved into our house in Shrewsbury. But I remember watching Manchester United v Everton in 1985 - notable for Kevin Moran becoming the first player sent off in an FA Cup final, and Manchester United winning in extra time through a goal from wonder-kid Norman Whiteside. I wanted Everton to win and was disappointed that they lost. 

I don't particularly remember anything from the 1986 final when Liverpool won the FA Cup and became the first team to win the League Title and the FA Cup in the same season (the "Double") in my short life-time. Everton were the losing finalists again.

I have vivid memories of the final in 1987 when Coventry City won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history, beating Spurs. Firstly, there were lots of goals, including a great diving header by Keith Houchen, and a looping own goal that sliced in off Spurs defender Gary Mabbutt's knee. But it was also played in brilliant sunlight and the Wembley grass was bright, bright green. We had a video recorder and taped the game. My brother and I rewatched that match several times, which is probably why it burns so bright in my memory.

And then in 1988, there was the famous win by Wimbledon over Liverpool. Nobody gave Wimbledon much of a chance, but they nicked a 1-0 win. By then I was fed up with Liverpool winning everything and all the gloryhunters at school, so I was very happy that Wimbledon won. 

Those are the finals I really remember. I'm sure I watched others. I remember Gazza being stretchered off after injuring himself with a ridiculous tackle in 1991. But other memories are hazy. What I mainly feel when I think about the FA Cup final relates to the whole family sitting down to watch the game, my father's infectious excitement, the sheer novelty of football on the telly, and this marking the end of a football season and in its own way the beginning of summer.

The other thing I remember is the family sweepstake. Once the team line-ups were announced, my dad would write all the player's names on tiny bits of scrap paper and we would take it in turns to draw them. Whoever had the piece of paper with the name of the first player to score a goal won. The prize was picking a box of chocolates afterwards, when we would walk across the park opposite our house to the little paper shop near the school, where there would be a small range of boxed chocs behind a glass screen. 

It felt like my mum won every year, even when she picked unlikely players to score first. This might be a trick of memory as I have no record of who actually won each year. It just felt like it was always my mum who was lucky in the sweep. It didn't matter anyway because the chocolates got shared. 

That vignette in itself is wrapped in nostalgia, like all these memories. The paucity of television channels. The simplicity of a sweepstake with very little at stake. Just those little family traditions that made the day special. That's where the magic lay, if there was any magic at all. Not on the field at Wembley, but in our living room. We made those moments happen and then froze them in sunlit amber as happy-sad memories. 

Maybe Dad was trying to keep those moments alive, with those phone calls after the game all those years after I left home when we didn't watch the game together any more. I understand that now. Now that the phone calls have stopped. 

Reflecting on 2021 - allowed back to football

In lieu of going to a football game on Boxing Day, here's a review of 2021 from a soccer perspective.

I didn't attend any football matches in the 2020-21 season, meaning it was the first season in over a quarter of a century where I didn't attend a single game. I missed out on my annual trip to see Shrewsbury play Bristol Rovers in Bristol, and then Rovers got relegated so Shrewsbury won't be playing them this season. At the end of the season I blogged about how it didn't really feel like it had happened. 

Just about the only football that I had in the spring!

In the summer of 2021, the delayed European Championships were held. They were still called Euro 2020. Originally I was going to go to some games - in the before times. But then had opted for a refund. I had to console myself with watching on TV, collecting the stickers and completing the wallchart that accompanied an issue of When Saturday Comes. It was the first time I had ever completed a wallchart for an international tournament. A small achievement. 

Just before England fluffed their chance

England had a glorious chance to win the competition - helped by playing most of their games at home in Wembley. Other countries (cough*Wales*cough) had to schlep all over Europe with fans unable to travel to support them. Despite all the advantages they were afforded, England were beaten by Italy in the final, which was made more memorable by ugly violent scenes as ticketless louts kicked their way into the ground.

But in July, a new season kicked off. I went to see Barry play a friendly in Bristol (so I have seen one game in Bristol this year!) and then the games started to rack up. I went to 11 games in August -  a new record for games in a month. 

I watched Barry play away games in Aberystwyth, Cefn just outside Wrexham, and Flint, where I think I might have seen a picture of my paternal grandad on the clubhouse wall. I also saw several Grange Albion games, in one of the local leagues, watched Poole Town three times with my friend Steve, and went with my brother and nephew to watch Shrewsbury earn a creditable draw at Hillsborough against Sheffield Wednesday. 

For many clubs in Wales, the season had started earlier than normal - a precaution in case restrictions came back into place in the winter. That has proven to be prescient as just before Christmas the Welsh Government mandated a ban on spectators at sporting events. The FAW responded by putting the top three tiers of Welsh football on hiatus until January. I had reached 31 games for the season just before the spectator ban came in, which neatly took me to a total of exactly 400 games recorded on the Futbology App.

At this point it is impossible to know when the restrictions on supporters will be lifted and when I will be checking in at matches on Futbology in the New Year. Shrewsbury have a big game in January 2022 - a third round tie at Anfield. However, I feel it's unlikely I will go given the current infection rates. It may not even take place when scheduled, because covid is causing a lot of postponements at all levels of football at the moment.

And, it's not as if I'm missing out. I have seen Shrewsbury play at Anfield not too long ago. This time when the teams meet there will be no replays, so if Liverpool aren't as lucky as they were last time, with the own goals and dodgy VAR decisions, it could be memorable. 

From a field to Anfield

This is just a silly football-related blogpost highlighting the extremes of watching football. On Saturday 1 February I was at Coronation Park, off Sloper Road in Cardiff watching Grange Albion of the South Wales Alliance Premier League play Merthyr Saints.

Merthyr set up to defend a corner

It was a decent game played in blustery conditions. Grange scored early then failed to score a number of really good chances. A couple of minutes before the end of the game, they conceded a penalty, which was duly converted, and the game ended in a draw.

Coronation Park is a football pitch next to the bus depot (site of a fun day out in times past!). I've given up making jokes about parking the bus, because my friend Tom who I go with didn't think it was funny the first fifteen times I said it. The rest of the ground backs on to houses and an abandoned playpark where the swings have been removed. I walked across the pitch and it's got daisies growing on it. It is literally a field.

Three days later I was watching Shrewsbury Town play Liverpool in the FA Cup replay at Anfield, one of the most famous grounds in football. There had been some controversy about the game because Liverpool were only going to play their under-23 team. Still, this was the first time Shrewsbury had ever played at Anfield and the universe, for once, conspired in my favour because I had some work booked in North Wales the following day, which had been in my diary for weeks before the fixture was announced. So I had a good reason to be in the vicinity.

It's fair to say Anfield was a bit different to Coronation Park.

A blue and amber huddle in a sea of red

8,000 Shrewsbury fans made the trip to Anfield, packing out the away end. It was the first time Shrewsbury had played with a Video Assisted Referee (VAR) and, as you would expect, after Shrewsbury scored, the officials rewound the tape until they found a reason to disallow the goal. What's the point of having VAR if it doesn't prevent one of the biggest clubs in the country going out of the top cup competition, after all? LiVARpool eventually went on and won the game, thanks to one of the Shrewsbury defenders panicking and heading the ball into his own net.

Shrewsbury will never have a better opportunity to win at Anfield than this game, and to lose it to an own goal is such a quintessentially Shrewsbury Town fan experience it almost beats losing for the fifth time at Wembley.

For me the contrast between where I was watching football on the Saturday and the Tuesday was the most amusing aspect. Football is football, whatever the surroundings look like. The game is still the game; the drama is still the drama; the disappointment is still the disappointment.

30 seconds of fame

A while back I blogged about a piece I wrote for the When Saturday Comes website about half and half scarves (which was then published in the magazine).

My collection of everything
that's wrong with modern football

Last night at just past 11 o'clock I had a tweet from a producer on BBC Radio 5 asking if I was the guy who wrote the article. When I said yes they asked if I would like to be on Radio 5 this morning to defend half and half scarves. Apparently a pub in Manchester had banned people from wearing them in and Radio 5 wanted to do a bit about it on the breakfast show. I said yes. I mean, who wouldn't like to be on national radio first thing in the morning?

It's interesting to see what goes in to a tiddly piece like this. First there was a phone call at 11.30pm, then another call at 7.15 to check I was still available, then the actual call where I waited for them to start talking about the topic, then I had to listen to grumpy Liverpool fanzine editor who reckoned watching football should be an Orwellian-style 'Ninety Minute Hate', then my 30 seconds saying 'they're just souvenirs', then grumpy bloke again, cut to the eight o'clock news, a goodbye from the researcher who had phoned me and it was all over.

Was it worth it? Maybe. It was a different way to start a Monday. Do some people care too much about trivial things like half and half scarves? Yes. Clearly they do. Is there anything wrong with wanting a memento of a big game? No, I don't think so.

Unofficial Ars-cannon-nal

I can understand people who follow big clubs being fed up with tourists turning up and buying half and half scarves at league games. Although, as Cathy pointed out, it would have been nice for my four year old niece to have had a special scarf to commemorate the first game she went to earlier this year. But while half and half scarves are apparently the worst thing about Premier League football, they aren't that common in the murky depths of League 1. My niece will have to wait until Shrewsbury next get one of the big boys in a cup.

I hope it's Liverpool, just to annoy that grumpy fanzine guy. I will be buying two!

Ha ha, Liverpool assumed too much!

I actually caught the last few minutes of the FA Cup replay between Reading and Liverpool this week, and held my breath as Reading held on for an "historic" win at Anfield for the first time ever. I don't know when we started calling such events "historic" but it's become the de rigueur thing to do.

Anyway, it was a great win for Reading. And then today I got the weekly email from When Saturday Comes and, boy, did I laugh when it reported this:

"With online and automated purchases the days of queuing up outside ticket offices are long gone. So well done to Liverpool for organising their FA Cup fourth round tie so promptly. This message was sent out before Wednesday's home defeat against Reading:

As a valued member of the Auto Cup Scheme, we'd like to confirm details for the following FA Cup match:

FA Cup
Liverpool v Burnley (4th Round)
Saturday 23rd January 2010. Kick Off: 12.45pm
The Ticket Office will begin taking payments for the above game from Thursday 14th January.

Ha ha ha! My buddy Matt always say that 'when you assume you make an ass out of u and me'. I bet someone at Liverpool FC feels a proper plonker now!

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