No! You certainly don't look it *Isn't that we're supposed to say to ladies? Ps... Archers is clearly 9 years older than me
Saints won the cup before I was born so I have no memories of it myself. My Grandad went to the game though, when he passed away I got his FA Cup mirror and record with the commentary of the match. Not listened to the record yet though.
I was 22 years young and a student, staying in the flat my then girlfriend shared with a load of Man Utd fans in a big old house in Clifton, Bristol. I suffered put-downs, joshing, insults about my beloved team, and general abuse all day, right through the build up, right through to the 83rd minute and Stokesy's glorious, never-to-be-forgotten goal. I had just lit a cigarette when the ball went in the net, and the said *** was promptly extinguished on the ornately plastered ceiling as I leapt high in celebration. The Man U mob moaning on about some rule they had made up called "offside" made no blot on my joy, I merely advised them to look at the score, something I continue to do to any Man Utd fans I meet to this day. Glorious.
Biggest single match of the year, by a mile. Only other match which came remotely close was the League Cup Final and that was done almost exactly the same in March or April, and was a kind of warm-up act for the greatest football day of the year. Amazingly, people nowadays want to ditch the League Cup and don't care about the FA Cup. It's media programming and Champions League which has made the thinking go that way. Personally, I don't give a toss about the CL, but I'm still interested in the domestic competitions. If both of the old Cups were covered to the same extent as they were 40 years ago there wouldn't a supporter voicing for anything other than more and more of them both.
I'm under 40 and once watched my dads VHS copy of the final.....Don't bother, would be the honest review. Stokes goal and the celebrations afterwards is all that matters. Turner made some great saves and even with hindsight you could feel the tension of the last few minutes, but the game was by no means a classic.
I was alive, but FAR too young to remember the actual event My dad went along though, and I remember him telling me that they were selling Manchester United, FA Cup Winners, 1976 t-shirts outside Wembley on the day, such was their confidence. I did have a wee next to Peter Rodrigues at Alan Ball's 50th birthday party too, if that counts?
The first time I felt old was when I was working in the late 1970s (so would have been just under thirty) and I realised that some of the lab techs didn't remember the Coronation street parties. Pretty soon we will have some lad on the edge of the first team who wasn't alive for the turn of the millennium.
I started to feel old once I was getting older than the footballers. Now I'm getting older than the managers...
FA Cup day was huge with both the BBC and ITV showing not just the match but the hours of build-up too. I'm getting all nostalgic!
