Happy 100th birthday, Wembley Stadium.

 Happy 100th birthday, Wembley Stadium.

Is it really 100 years since Wembley Stadium opened its hallowed turnstiles to feverish sports fans? How time flies and yet the truth is the national stadium does looks healthier in as much as that the new stadium looks stronger, fitter and more appealing to the eye than ever before. The celebrations are in full swing and yet little in the way of publicity has been given to the centenary of Wembley. It stands there modestly and imposingly, as if not caring a jot what other people may think of it. There is a very discreet respectability about Wembley Stadium that many of us have come to respect for as long as we can remember.

Wembley Stadium was there when you were a kid, it was there throughout your adolescence and even now brings a sentimental lump to your throat whenever you give it several moments of consideration. But why? The simple answer is that we don't know because we grew up with its stunning architecture, its place in Britain's cultural history, its easy accessibility whenever FA Cup Final day just happened to be on the TV. You could feel the tension, become an active participant in everything Wembley represented. You, too, could be there in the 100,000 crowd, amusing banners flying, scarves whirling in the air before soaking up the magical atmosphere as goals or rugby league tries were scored in glorious profusion.

From a very young age Wembley was FA Cup Final day, the must see sporting event of the day. It drew you into the huge banks of seats, the stands and terraces bursting at the seams. Wembley was like a welcoming host to the grandest party of all time. The sense of human communality and solidarity amongst rival fans almost made it personal, a stadium with a mystical aura about it, a timeless charm, a ground that heroically survived two World Wars and then just dusted itself down for another 75 years of ecstatic victory and tear stained defeat.

Teams came and went, players cried copiously and then celebrated the night away in London nightclubs, bars and restaurants. It almost felt as though something extra special had just taken place. Wembley was the emotional roller coaster that kept turning our stomachs with every conceivable feeling. You remember where you were when consciousness of the old Wembley Stadium suddenly made you feel ten feet tall. You were a child of nature, the year was 1971 and Arsenal played Liverpool in that year's FA Cup Final.

In retrospect of course it feels strange now but there was something that made for compulsive viewing, a fascination with the images, pictures, the whole context and narrative of what had just happened. At one end of the old Wembley Stadium, a huge electronic score board showed a Radio Times advertisement, the BBC's now celebrated TV listings magazine. But you gazed in wonderment at Arsenal, under the magnificently paternal figure of Bertie Mee, wearing yellow shirts on the day while in the red corner there was Bill Shankly, canny, shrewd, hugely knowledgeable and a Liverpool manager whose legacy would never be forgotten.

By coincidence, it just happened to be one of the most gripping, compelling and brilliant FA Cup Finals your very young eyes had ever seen. You had no idea of the game's fundamental mechanics, its laws, rules and regulations, its complex technicalities and its very basic rudiments. You had to work out why there were two goals with two posts and two crossbars. You scratched your heads with utter bewilderment at the white lines on both wings, the goal- lines, the tunnels from where the players emerged and why there were so many people cheering their heads off when a football crossed the line.

But as time went on you accepted that a homegrown Arsenal product in Charlie George loved nothing better than slumping to the ground and lying flat on his back as his ferocious shot from just outside the Liverpool penalty area flew past Liverpool goalkeeper Ray Clemence for the winning goal. He then stretched out his arms to embrace the rest of his team mates and at that point you realised immediately that Wembley was something more than the building that hosted major sporting occasions. It was our first connection to football, our embryonic relationship with the game and everything it meant to the outside world.

From that moment onwards you were hooked, transfixed by its seductive charms, thrilled by its theatricality, its sense of occasion and the way you were just transported to a world of 90 minutes of pure excitement, those fluctuations of fortune where nobody can predict the outcome of any one given match at any time. Wembley put the whole of the world in some very sober perspective because 100,000 invariably turned up for an FA Cup Final so there had to be something in the air. Here was a gathering of like minded souls, supporters with passionate hearts while the rest of society and the globe went shopping on a Saturday afternoon or washed their cars.

And yet it made all common sense. During one memorable summer during the 1970s, an intrepid daredevil risked life and limb in perhaps the most spectacular of spectacles. Evil Knievel, an American with a complete disregard of any of the risks attached to motor bike riding, settled down in his bike ready to launch into what can only be considered the craziest stunt ride of all time. Wembley Stadium fell silent, a hush descended over North London and our fearless friend from the USA revved up his bike before hurtling towards the longest row of London buses that had ever been seen. Travelling at some ridiculous speed Knievel lifted the said bike into mid air and jumped over the buses as if he'd done the same thing over and over again without batting an eye lid.

Then Wembley has opened its doors to a myriad other activities. Over the years, the stadium has hosted speedway meetings, pop concerts, greyhound races while not forgetting of course American football. It is an all purpose, versatile and vastly impressive ground where on an early afternoon in May two football teams normally slug out for the gold medal, FA Cup winning trophy. But this year this FA Cup Final is, bizarrely, at the beginning of June. This would never be the intention in any other year but at the end of last year the World Cup took precedence to everything else thus pushing back the date of the FA Cup Final. 

So it is that we will look on at the first ever Manchester derby FA Cup Final between United and City and find some poetic symmetry in it all. Wembley is 100 years old and two of Britain's most famous, popular, enormously wealthy and instantly identifiable of all clubs. It is a prospect to whet the appetites of any neutral football supporter because Wembley does that to you, right in the solar plexus.

Overlooking the new Wembley is its most distinctive and striking Arch. On FA Cup Final morning the rituals will be observed and protocols carried out with due diligence. They'll set up the sprinklers in strategic areas of the immaculately green grass, thoroughly check the nets, lay out the players kit in those wonderfully spacious dressing rooms and then just get on with the business of playing. The days of TV involvement from early morning to late afternoon are long since defunct but the players will still wander around the pitch before the game, compare suits, shirts or ties for a while, wave to watching families in the crowd and then joke about their hair cuts.

Wembley Stadium, in its centenary year, will not be getting a telegram from the new King perhaps but it will be reminiscing on the Stanley Matthews Final when the Blackpool winger finally picked up his first FA Cup winners medal in 1953. It will remember Bob Stokoe galloping across the Wembley pitch like a man running after a bus, all coat and hat as Sunderland became one of the first old Second Division sides to win the FA Cup.

But above all English football will never be allowed to forget the World Cup in 1966 where a remarkably over confident Sir Alf Ramsey guided England to their very first World Cup. It's all well documented and gleefully replicated now but England did win the World Cup at the old Wembley Stadium and even the most cynical would have to admit that matches do not get any better with the passage of time. It's 100 years since Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham United in the first FA Cup Final at the old Wembley and 100 years later the brand new, sparkling Wembley Stadium awaits its next gladiators. What a national treasure. Happy Birthday Wembley.