West Ham beat Fulham in repeat of the 1975 FA Cup Final.

West Ham beat Fulham in repeat of the 1975 FA Cup Final.

The dark winter skies were weeping over West London like a child at the end of their birthday party. It was a Saturday evening at Craven Cottage and that dear old ground by the Thames riverside might have harked back ever so briefly to the days of that lovely comedian Tommy Trinder and that gold embossed season back in the 1970s when those two hardened stagers Rodney Marsh and the peerless George Best had everybody reeling in the aisles.

 Maybe their minds were cast back to the jutting chin and beard of Jimmy Hill, the ever composed Johnny Haynes, a midfield technician with a sharp and intuitive mind and an imperious England player. Or maybe they were thinking of what might have been had that special May day in 1975  turned out differently. They might have been thinking of Bobby Moore, the one player who must have been deeply torn because for a large chunk of his career Moore, then with Fulham could only look at his claret and blue opponents and smile wistfully at the reflection bouncing back at him in the mirror.

Yesterday West Ham, 43 years on from that sentimental day in 1975 and Fulham, met again under completely different circumstances but convinced that this was still a no old pals act. In the 1975 FA Cup semi final Fulham had taken the game to Birmingham City so convincingly that even now it feels like one of those sepia tinted moments when the world suddenly stops still. Viv Busby and John Mitchell terrorised the Birmingham defence cruelly that day and Fulham knew that this would be their year.

For those of a claret and blue attachment though this had been a year to remember. Adolescence was about to set in with a vengeance and West Ham had done sufficiently well to catch my heart. Since my grandfather had passed on his claret and blue wisdom it only seemed natural that something would hook me. But West Ham it was to be and the unstinting support has been severely tested over the years. Still Plashet Grove in Upton Park has a lot to be said for it and, subconsciously at least, West Ham have always been the perfect footballing liaison.

So it was that the claret and blue of West Ham, led out by the bearded and formidable Billy Bonds, marched out alongside the ever dependable Alan Mullery, formerly and unmistakably the leader of the pack at Tottenham - but now distinctively in the white shirt of Fulham. That day West Ham became one of the last all English teams to reach and win an FA Cup Final which may still be regarded by some as a victory for patriotism but now has an old fashioned feel about it. Still, the Premier League is nonetheless wonderfully richer for its global reach and besides who cares?

That year West Ham's yellow brick road to the FA Cup Final had started very humbly at Swindon, moved seamlessly through Queens Park Rangers, Arsenal in a veritable mud bath at Highbury and then the triumphant icing on the cake against Bobby Robson's Ipswich Town which went to a semi final replay at Stamford Bridge. Their path to the Cup Final had been relatively easy apart from Arsenal but one man stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Alan Taylor, who came from the old Fourth Division, plied his trade at Rochdale, who were so miserably anchored near the bottom of the Football League that nobody seemed to bat an eyelid when John Lyall paid the princely sum of £40,000 for a striker nobody had ever heard of. At Highbury Arsenal simply couldn't handle Taylor which, given the fact that most of the players needed a good, sturdy pair of galoshes to wade through the treacly mud, now seems like an achievement in itself.

When Taylor came sliding into meet the low cut back cross into the Arsenal six yard box, the ball seemed to quite literally stick in the cloying glue pot that was the penalty area. You were reminded of the conventional allotment site where rhubarbs join forces with tomatoes and weeds. For a split second a static and frozen Arsenal defence stood stock still in a state of shock. Taylor, anticipating the cross, tapped the ball into the net, grabbed hold of the net and swung elatedly on to it. West Ham were on the way to Wembley Stadium.

The spine of that team back in 1975 was somehow destined to win an FA Cup. Mervyn Day was a young and potentially brilliant England goalkeeper whom West Ham must have felt sure would be a permanent England fixture. Day freely admits that whole day was a blur but when the final whistle went that day, Day had still won the FA Cup, showing exemplary reflexes and  an excellent command of his penalty area.

At the heart of the West Ham defence the blond haired Kevin Lock had been a mature, reliable and cool, calm and collect full back, sensibly doing the simple thing at all times. Frank Lampard senior was still galloping down the flanks and sending logical passes into the right areas. Tommy Taylor, although possibly cumbersome at times, cleared any hint of danger at centre half with a nerveless display of the defender's art.

And then there was Billy Bonds, a model of tireless athleticism, rugged steeliness and the most commanding of auras. Having joined West Ham from Charlton Athletic in 1967, Bonds melted the hearts of the Upton Park loyalists. Bonds was brave, heroic, here there and everywhere, ubiquitous, boldly buccaneering, up and down the sapping Wembley pitch seemingly constantly. The sense of fan identification had become a real one. Bonds knew all about those hard working East End dockers who would go straight to Upton Park and demand entertainment for their hard earned money.

In midfield that sun lit Cup Final day of 1975 three homegrown West Ham academy products would wear their claret and blue cap and gown. Pat Holland was inexhaustible, running, scurrying, carrying the ball almost movingly, darting, weaving, giving and taking in a kind of reciprocal agreement with his team mates. The socks were almost on first name terms with his ankles, the shirt flapping listlessly in the gentle Wembley wind like a rowing boat's sail. Holland was the man who kept shovelling coal into a grand old steam engine, hovering and floating serenely in the middle of the pitch.

Then there was the late Graham Paddon, another of those players of subtlety and cunning that although not a West Ham graduate, still performed with immaculate distinction. Paddon, also bearded like a pirate, was smooth, streamlined, graceful, always comfortable with the ball and never fazed by the immensity of the occasion. Paddon it was whose shot from Pat Holland's pass was sadly fumbled by Fulham keeper Peter Mellor from which point Taylor nipped in smartly to score West Ham's conclusive second and winning goal.

And then the now Sir Trevor Brooking, a West Ham player through and through to the bitter end. Brooking was still generating all of the right headlines at the time, poised to become one of England's greatest midfield players. He was young, fresh, sprightly and full of neat dabs on the artist's canvas. His display against Fulham was modest but even then notably influential. There was that nuanced shielding of the ball from the throw in, the drop of the shoulder and then the varnished accuracy of his passing range, threaded through passes that were softly rolled across Wembley with barely a whisper.

So it is that we come right up to the present day. Yesterday in the gathering gloom of Craven Cottage and the steady rain, Felipe Anderson, a classic West Ham buy from Lazio, gave another perfect dress rehearsal for the role of star playmaker at West Ham. A couple of seasons ago West Ham thought they'd snaffled the top prize in the raffle when Frenchman Dimitri Payet snatched the conductor's baton and reminded the West Ham faithful that there was still a place for the dapper stylist.

 Then Anderson, Brazilian by birth and Brazilian in playing temperament, is beginning to show everybody at West Ham that dreams do come true. He plays the game in the way in the way that Brazilians have always played it: grammatically correct, tap dancing his way in and out of a rapidly retreating Fulham defence and then striking the most devastating of passes in both the short and long form. After a wobbly start to the season, Anderson's stunning display of the samba has become almost second nature.

Beside Anderson, Robert Snodgrass, a busily passionate Scotsman, raced across the centre circle full of energy, verve and joie de vivre, carving out spaces like the proverbial sculptor. Then there was Mark Noble, West Ham skipper and still clocking up the mileage for the club unquestioningly. Noble once again gave the impression that he wanted to be in a hundred places at the same time. In the murk and mist of West London, Noble's shirt positively glistened with sweat.

With Michal Antonio bulldozing his way down the wing, Pablo Zabelata, tidy and always ready for the most crunching challenges, West Ham were mean and moody. Javier Hernandez, who could be vitally indispensable to West Ham in the second half of the season, worked hither and thither, a jack  in the box, always threatening, always sure of himself, a man with a ravenous appetite for goals.

When Snodgrass slammed home West Ham's first goal and Antonio had shrewdly picked up a ball that was headed onto him and completed West Ham's second goal, everything in the West Ham garden had now become rosy. It was a time for the West Ham fans at Craven Cottage to sing about their ever buoyant bubbles, Andy Carroll to make one of those now walk on roles for the club and West Ham to enter a higher stratosphere.

For some of us though it was nice to think back to the last time West Ham met Fulham on more important occasions.  Yesterday though was West Ham's fourth successive victory in a row and for those of us who thought they'd seen it all, the element of surprise can almost be felt. Surely, this is too good to be true and sooner or later the winning run will reluctantly end. For the time being though miracles are possible and West Ham will do their utmost to climb onto higher platforms.

But as long as the Christmas decorations come down with a harmless plop then the second half of the Premier League season may have a spring in its step for West Ham. As long as the London Stadium becomes a home from home for West Ham then all should be fine and dandy. Bubbles will assuredly keep blowing.