Almanac Soccer: FA Cup – We gotta hold on to what we got

My first nostalgic memory of the FA Cup is 1979, Arsenal 3-2 Manchester United. It was a warm and sunny day at far away Wembley, it’s always warm and sunny on that one day in May, but my soon-to-be eight-year-old self was on the other side of the world, watching it on the ABC with my father, a blanket and a cup of warm Milo.

 

It would’ve been a 10pm, or thereabouts, kick off, early afternoon in north London, a perfect excuse to stay up late with Des my Dublin Da and cheer on the yellow shirts with blue trim as they made magic in front of 100,000 people. Or perhaps it was red with white trim and I’m confusing this with the 1971 Double? Rather than check online I prefer to let nostalgia argue it out with memory in lazily comforting revery.

 

It became a small ritual with my father that, staying up late and watching the final of the world’s oldest knockout competition, even when Spurs won it four years in row. Then as I got older it became a ritual with my mates, eventually turning into early-20s FA Cup parties in the usual, and then affordable, Brisbane share house suburbs of Paddington and Red Hill, maybe West End or New Farm. We loved the cruisy end of season vibe – actually, I can’t recall missing too many years since 1979 in any part of town – and the tradition of bad suits, the Benaudesque creamy pinnacle and / or nadir of which was Liverpool’s Spice Boys in 1996.

 

One year later, I moved to London, spending the second half of a great decade there just two tube stops from Highbury, that beautiful old ground resting comfortably in the arms of its surrounding terraced houses, as if it had always been there and the houses were built later to support it. As someone who grew up watching English football on TV game days felt exotic to me, Avenell Road alive with people and scarves and touts and sellers of all kinds of tat imaginable, as long as it was red and white. My first year there was the year Wenger broke that long League title drought. Beers literally flew at the Twelve Pins – I told someone in the gents, letting rip with my best ocker accent, that I’d flown over from Australia especially for the match – I leant the ‘Arsene Wenger’s Red and White Army’ chant and about a billion people partied on Blackstock Road. It made Fever Pitch look like A Country Practice.

 

European nights were particularly electric. I used to ride my bike around the ground in the build up to kick off, like a ghost absorbing and feeding off the buzzing crackle and fizz, then watch the game at The Gunners or the T-Bird. Match tickets for those nights were hens’ teeth, but I made it inside for a few League games. The moment in the Invincibles year when Thierry Henry (TH14 to his mates) painted a free kick of incomprehensible power and beauty right in front of me is seared into my memory to be treasured forever.

 

A new Cup ritual soon emerged: head to a crowded and sweaty pub in the early afternoon, albeit slightly uneasy during the weird Cardiff years when Wembley was being tarted up with a bit of a reno, perhaps kick on afterwards deep into a London Saturday Night / Sunday Morning if the stars were aligned or, if not, head home to watch the replay on the Beeb with a four-pack of Kronenbourg or Stella from the offy.

 

Arsenal seemed to win it every year for a while there. Such is the power of nostalgia (an illness we all suffer from, remember, according to the Greeks) that to this day I favour FA Cup glory over Europe. (Although, yeah, Paris still hurts.) So many great memories. The absolute thunderbolt unleashed by the Romford Pele, Ray Parlour, to stun Chelsea, not to mention a Bristolian mate of mine, who hated Parlour. The time Arsenal got absolutely hammered by Manchester United for 120 scoreless minutes  before Vieeerrraaa, oh oh ooohhh oh, Vieeeerrraa smashed in the winning penalty in the shoot out. Absolute highway robbery! But as it was just a few weeks after the direct hit of Wayne Rooney’s dive ran out Arsenal’s unbeaten League streak, one short of its half century, a crime no jury in the land would convict. It turned out to be the last time the French giant put his right foot on a ball in that glorious Arsenal number 4 shirt.

 

I also have a painful memory of the year Arsenal wined and dined Liverpool without ever luring them to bed – “They’ll regret not taking their chances for mine, Martin” – only for Michael Owen to break my heart right at the death. The death of romance for mine, Martin. I ended up walking home deep into that London Saturday Night / Sunday Morning, from Shoreditch to Swiss Cottage, to find the old church next door to our apartment building had been taken over by a bunch of travellers holding a polite but very, very loud 36-hour rave. I’ve hated doof ever since.

 

Now everything has changed, as everything tends to do. Arsenal play at Sponsors Stadium instead of Highbury and nostalgia makes me hate that. In particular, the Cup kick off time has criminally been shunted later to silly o’clock Sunday morning here, and of course held this year in August when clubs would usually be starting their heat-slowed, short-socked, pre-season kickabouts. At least it pretty much guarantees sunny, I guess.

 

I’m writing this on Cup Final eve on a warm-for-a-Melbourne-winter’s day, fresh out of a morning wake-up dip in Port Phillip, the cold water and long overdue vitamin D on my face and hands having lifted my sagging lockdown spirits. It’s 40 years and a few weeks since I became a Gooner. In a few hours, Arsenal and their young, ex-midfielder Manager will walk out at Wembley in front of a crowd of zero alongside Chelsea and their young, ex-midfielder Manager. Best of luck to both of them.

 

I’m grateful to live by the water in St Kilda and still be healthy and employed and with a cat that wakes me every morning to remind me that his stomach is much more important than any virus so hurry up and get out of bed and feed me, but there are still too many ‘certainly’ days – when Brett Sutton’s first word is ‘certainly’ you know it’s a bad numbers day – for me to feel too much excitement about anything. Seemingly every third day brings higher numbers.

 

Then you chuck in an empty Wembley, that criminally late kick off time and the fact that the chances of bad suits making us laugh are zero. Not that it’s even on the tele here this year anyway, for some reason, the first year I can remember it not being televised. You think we’d have learnt by now that some things matter more than profit. Anyway, amongst the gloom all I can muster is the asinine thought that if Arsenal ‘turn up’, as they say, the Cup will return to its rightful home. If they don’t, ex-Gunner Oliver Giroud and his handsome beard will fill his boots with goals galore. Either way, to be honest I can’t muster much else.

 

Postscript: On reflection, that last paragraph was only true in a Trumpian sense. I can also muster great memories that make me smile. That never-gets-tired couplet informing us that Vieira comes from Se-ne-gal and plays for Ar-se-nal. The Petit porno song. Loving Freddie cause he’s got red hair and is everywhere. That Pires, um, let’s be honest, dive against poor Portsmouth. Mary Shelley’s Jens Lehmann (thank you Guardian). A defence that defended, as in didn’t-let-in-any-goals defended.

And you know what? The sun is still shining, I’ve been in the bay again, the Sainters are finally kicking straight and Arsenal increased their record of Cup Final wins to 14. The gloom, if not the lockdown, lifts ever so slightly.

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

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