FA Cup Column By @ExWHUEmployee
It has been a while since I last wrote for ClaretandHugh but I am pleased to write another article for the site before what I believe to be a very important game for the club. I apologise for the lack of columns recently but as some of you know I have also been starting my own website up at www.thewesthamway.co.uk – be sure to pop by and check us out too.
The FA Cup match against Wolves is a game that we must and will take seriously. In our last season at Upton Park we need to try and extend it as much as possible and another few home FA Cup ties and hopefully a quarter final would really send off our magnificent stadium in style.
Some of my favourite moments at the stadium have been in the FA Cup. In my first ever season as a season ticket holder I witnessed my hero Stuart Slater destroy Everton in the quarter final. I remember the emotion of being knocked out by Arsenal on penalties in 1998, again at the quarter final stage, and facing all my mates at school the next day. It is fair to say that I still feel the romance of the cup.
Yes the FA Cup has lost some of the glamour in the UK than it had when I was a kid but it is still a special trophy. The cup is watched all around the world and is arguably just as notorious now as it was in the past in many countries. There is a larger global audience now with countries such as the USA and those in Asia becoming more fanatical about our beautiful game so in some ways it is just as big.
The Wolves game has already sold out and this would be the case for any future games too and so the occasions would all be special and worth putting a strong side out which Bilic does intend to do.
If we could progress well in the cup and perhaps even reach the final and, heaven forbid, win it really would be the most magical way for us to leave the stadium, home to so many special FA Cup memories. My dad must have told me about his day at the 1980 FA Cup final so many times that I couldn’t count now and to be able to do this in the last season at the Boleyn Ground would be the utopian send-off that the old girl truly deserves.
I have been “lucky” enough to have already been to two FA Cup Semi Finals in my life time and to one final (the Liverpool one) and those games will forever live in my memory. Imagine what it would be like to experience us winning the FA Cup. I wasn’t born the last time we did and as the years tick by less and less of us have had that privilege and surely this has to change soon?
I read an interesting omen today that the last time we did the double over Liverpool was the first time we won the FA Cup. I am a great believer in stories and fate and I can’t help but think this could be history repeated.
It would also be a superb thing to start the new season at the Olympic Stadium with European football available too. I know we didn’t take it as a priority this year but this was because we entered so early. If we won the FA cup we would enter much further into the competition and have a normal pre-season!
It is fitting for me that we play Wolves in the match, the same team who we played after Bobby Moore’s death. That game lives in my memory and I am glad we get to play them again after they contributed to an emotional day in 1993.
The atmosphere will be buzzing and it is also a great chance for us to get a few players’ fitness up as well. I cannot wait for this match and I hope to hear Que Sera Sera around the Boleyn Ground at some point on Saturday as that timeless classic’s days are numbered at the stadium like most things. The matches are running out but let’s have a long FA Cup run to extend those days that little bit longer!!
COYI EXWHUEmployee
