From Bovril to Champagne: part 1

There was a time, not so long ago, when the FA Cup really mattered. When fans would go to extraordinary lengths to get tickets for Wembley and when the biggest teams of the day saw the FA Cup as a 'must have' rather than a 'nice to have.' The 1970s was, quite simply, a fantastic decade for the most famous domestic competition in the world, a decade in which the wonderful 'David and Goliath' stories which were the very essence of the Cup, at last spread themselves to the final itself. Of course, football fans everywhere know the stories. The famous goals by the likes of Porterfield, Stokes, George, Webb and Osborne. The saves by Montgomery, the misses by Macdonald, the flukes by Greenhoff and Kelly and the 'five minutes of madness' of the 1979 final. But what are not known are the stories of the fans who were at Wembley to witness these amazing matches which are so fondly remembered today. This book features, first-hand, exclusive stories from the fans who were there. Fans who defied the FA's patently unfair ticket allocation to get to Wembley. The book features love, tragedy, kinship and loyalty all played out before a backdrop of pop music, television, films, news and politics. It is a book not about players and celebrities but about true football fans, many of whom regard their personal Wembley experience as one of the greatest - or worst - occasions of their life.