FA Cup Final eve.

 FA Cup Final eve

So it was the day before the FA Cup Final and all is well. Liverpool and Chelsea are ready to go again. They've been prepared for so long that tomorrow may well turn into a depressing anti climax. This will be a repeat of the FA Cup Final of ten years ago, a rerun of the Carabao Cup Final and a repetition of the same scenario of the same play and the same stage performance, the same production and an adaptation of previous instalments of two teams who may well be thinking that familiarity could breed contempt. Well, not quite contempt.

Replicas of previous FA Cup Finals are beginning to follow a recurring pattern. Just when you thought it was safe and nobody was looking another Cup Final throws up that predictable combination of something you may have seen a million times before. For instance Arsenal and Liverpool have now met each other in Cup Finals so many times now that you're almost inclined to think that they should make prior booking arrangements for catering, hospitality and the dressing room of their choice.

In 1950 the Compton brothers Leslie and Denis guided Arsenal to victory against Liverpool and war time rationing was still prevalent. 21 years later at the old Wembley, Charlie George and George Graham scored the vital goals that clinched the FA Cup for Arsenal and accidentally set off a chain of events that would lead to yet more epic confrontations between North and South. In 2001 in Cardiff, Michael Owen snapped up the winner for Liverpool against Arsenal, steering the ball wide of Arsenal keeper David Seaman in a typically dramatic conclusion to another FA Cup after Liverpool had fallen behind. 

But tomorrow will offer up yet more intriguing variations on a theme. Can Liverpool achieve the impossible dream of winning all four of the trophies that have proved so elusive down the years to so many of the great and good? Your mind tells us that this could be wishful thinking, a fantasy that can never be fulfilled since emotions will be running high and besides something may give somewhere along the line. 

Back in the good, old days of FA Cup Finals the day was somehow designed for the neutral outsiders who just relished the game itself. Somehow it meant much more to the protagonists themselves who had reached the Final. But they were just delighted to be there anyway. Some of us have actually seen their team triumph on the day but regrettably that was 42 years ago and some of us are almost completely grey haired and can no longer recall anything of any substance and significance since then. 

In the historic sense FA Cup Final day was always played out on your parents TV when FA Cup Final morning became a ritualistic formality. It was all about fun and games, frothy frivolity, the customary sights and sounds. There were the humorous coach journeys before the game where both teams on the day would be interviewed by both BBC1 and ITV. There was the banter, the knockabout joking, the good natured bonhomie, there were the rivalries and a fleeting analysis of how the teams had got to the Final called 'The Road to Wembley'. It all seemed so innocent and firmly rooted in tradition.

Essentially the FA Cup Final represented the one day in the football calendar when the fans and the players became the central characters in the plot of the day. Nobody had anything to advertise on their shirts, sponsorship had yet to be invented and the occasion was blissfully free of any hint of materialism. It was a day for the family, children, teenagers, elderly folk and even mum could join in with the festivities. 

For somebody whose recollection of the big day is now so vivid that you can remember it as if it were yesterday, the FA Cup Final is still a big deal. You somehow felt emotionally involved in the game itself, a deep and lasting connection with the mythical importance of the occasion. In 1972 you struck gold with Leeds United against Arsenal in the Cup Final, the year of the FA Cup's 100th birthday. Still, you can see the valiant Mick Jones charging towards the by line for Leeds and then crossing precisely for Alan Clarke to send an aerodynamically perfect, diving header past Arsenal keeper Jeff Barnett. It was the start of a passionate rapport with everything that was so special about FA Cup Final day.

A year later Second Division Sunderland, the underdogs on the day, seized the day against Don Revie's high flying and irrepressible Leeds United and beat the Elland Road team 1-0. It was probably the first time any of us had ever seen an orange ball used in a Cup Final. The late Ian Porterfield trapped the ball intelligently on his thigh from a Bobby Kerr corner and smashed the ball high into the net past against a helpless Leeds keeper in David Harvey. On the final whistle Bob Stokoe, dressed rather like somebody chasing a bus in the rush hour, galloped onto the Wembley pitch, hat on head and beige coat almost beside itself with joy. 

Then there was the priceless magnificence of the 1981 FA Cup Final. When Spurs manager Keith Burkenshaw took what must have seemed the calculated gamble of buying two players from World Cup winning Argentina the previous year some sniffed disdainfully. It'll never work they said with a very dismissive air and yet it did resoundingly and impressively, even memorably. Ossie Ardilles and Ricky Villa came to England and fitted into the Spurs side almost seamlessly. 

After a dull and mundane first game, Spurs and Manchester City would give us a replay to remember, a compelling battle of wits and an exhibition that none of us could have predicted. The FA Cup was alive and well, up and running and hadn't forgotten where it had come from. After a hypnotic end to end contest, Ricky Villa picked up the ball on the edge of City's penalty area and proceeded to do the tango with the City defence. Villa started dribbling the ball beautifully with a run that slalomed first one way and then the other. It would prove the decisive winning goal for Spurs.

For older supporters the FA Cup was always illuminated in quite the most dazzling fashion by the players we always wanted to see lift the famous trophy. Up until 1953 Sir Stanley Matthews as he would become known had never won the FA Cup. Then in 1953, the year of Her Majesty the Queen's coronation, Matthews would go throughout all of the game's pretty calisthenics. There was the distinctive shuffle with the ball at his feet, the shoulder drops, then the teasing, coaxing, caressing routine with the ball at his feet rapidly followed by mocking, ridiculing and humiliating just for good measure. Matthews would be chaired victoriously by his Blackpool team mates in the Wembley Final and an FA Cup medal was his for keeps.

And so it came to pass that Liverpool will meet Chelsea in tomorrow's Wembley showpiece. For those of a nostalgic nature, the FA Cup Final will never be quite the same as it used to be. But then we must never stop the inexorable march of progress and evolution. For instance the FA Cup Final now kicks off at tea time and some of us believe this is sacrilege. Whoever came up with the bright idea of starting the Cup Final at 5.30 in the evening, a time when most of us would be contemplating a fish and chip supper and taking the dog for a walk in the park?

Even the National Anthem before the Cup Final doesn't seem to have the romance and sentimentality of old. True, it's still sung with much gusto and observed with the reverence it so thoroughly deserves. Abide With Me was also belted out with the kind of rousing conviction of the Last Night at the Proms. A patriotic gentleman would stand on a podium and conduct us with a rendition of a very old song. It was the most idyllic preamble to one of football's most recognisable of spectacles. Now Katherine Jenkins leads us all in the National Anthem and Abide With Me, still features on the day but somehow it all seems so different.

But when the final whistle goes tomorrow and either red or blue is pinned to the famous trophy, we'll remember those coach journeys, the rosettes and those glorious banners with their hilarious message, the swirling flags and scarves, the family unities and harmonies. FA Cup Final was meant for the people, the classless, a vast democracy that will never discriminate and an occasion and a day to savour. For those who love its stunning colour, its pomp and ceremony and the uncertainty which leads to its triumphant certainty, this is your day in the middle of May no matter who you are or where you are. Are you ready Chelsea and Liverpool because we are? Wembley, Wembley.