Stephen Foster - The Final

Cover Design: James Shepherd
For Mum
Notes on the pre-match I cannot type. Ten books in to my work as a writer I refuse to learn, in case improving my keyboard technique produces a side-effect. My fear is that if I get faster, Ill get worse. My inability comes in various guises. I can never put a y in everything, I always reverse the au in because, but at the moment my most oft-repeated mistake is that every time I try years I get tears (t is next to y on the qwerty keyboard). After 148 tears in existence as a football club is my first effort at an opening sentence. Im tempted to leave it, it reminds me of this poem by Dylan Thomas when he shifts a word from one paradigm to another and uses an emotion to measure time; the poem is called A Grief Ago . Ive seen it in the past and Ill see it again but I doubt if Ill see it quite this way again: at the end of this match I turn round to see grown men sobbing like babies, one fat man behind me wipes away his years on the tattoos of his forearms then rests his arms on his belly while the next batch roll down his cheeks. Perhaps when he tells his grandchildren about this match will describe it in emotions: Once upon a time, many tears ago When I was a kid I used to be fascinated by the (often, blank) space at the foot of the back page of the local paper, the North Staffordshire Evening Sentinel. It was the STOP PRESS column. STOP PRESS After 148 years in existence Stoke City make it to their first ever FA Cup Final! First ever is a tautology, perhaps, but Ill have to let it stand because first isnt strong enough on its own, not after a century and a half of not getting here. STOP PRESS Stoke City were formed in 1863. On Saturday 14th May 2011 they will play in their first ever FA Cup Final. While we believed that this day could come to pass for more or less everybody else, it seemed to be a simple matter of fate that it could never happento us. This had become accepted as something quite near to a fact. And then we got to a semi-final. This is rare, but not unprecedented. It happened in 1899, and its happened twice in my lifetime (1971 and 1972). On each of those latter occasions we were beaten by Arsenal, each time in contentious circumstances, as a consequence of extraordinarily poor decisions from officials. But on April 17th, 2011 Stoke City, established in 1863, beat Bolton Wanderers in the semi-final of the FA Cup five-nil [ Etherington (11) Huth (17) Jones (30) Walters (68, 81)] Five-nil . Five. The record books had to come out to see how long it was since such a margin of victory was recorded in an FA Cup semi-final. It last happened a generation back, it took place a grief ago. And so, finally, eventually, enfin, at the end of the day, in the fullness of time and at long, long last, it has happened. To us. Our opponents in the Football Association Challenge Cup FA Cup final sponsored by e-on ( one of the UK's leading integrated power and gas companies) are Manchester City. Man City are only thirty-odd miles up the road from Stoke-on-Trent and in theory I am not so fond of them. They are a brash tribe with a high opinion of themselves; they are Liam Gallagher monkey walking down the pavement asking for it. I live in Norwich, about two hundred miles from either Stoke-on-Trent or Manchester but if I dont feel the presence of the more northern city bearing down on myself as a local physical presence, I know the sense of that oppressive feeling only too well. Its embedded in my psycho-geographical memory: we used to get taken to Manchester on a school trip when I was a kid growing up in the Potteries. Wed be shown about the Corn Exchange (we did not have a corn exchange of our own) and later we would go round the Arndale shopping centre, the very size of it, or Kendals department store, the Harrods of the North, how grand. And all the while looking over your shoulder and speaking out of the side of your mouth to keep your accent down, a scrap waiting to happen round every corner, roughhouses with names that seemed somehow designed to arouse fear: Ardwick, Moss Side, Strangeways. Population of Stoke: three hundred thousand; population of Greater Manchester: over two million. The bustle of it. And then back home - what a scruffy city it is that you live in, isnt it, shabby, really, and how much more beautiful for all that because home is home and Stoke is equally tough, is, in fact, tougher than Manchester, and better than Manchester too, and has its own names to arouse fear, names that are less famous, maybe, but we know them alright. In the thirty years or so since my school trips, as much as it has changed between us and them then equally as much as it has stayed the same (small wonder we use French to express this idea: Plus a change ): they are still a richer, bigger city and that will always be the case and now it is worse because oil money is pouring in to Manchester City from the middle east (Eastlands, their new stadium, so easily translates to Middle Eastlands; how very comedy-Manchester City that is, how very like them ) because someone, somewhere wants to buy prestige through the global brand that is football. As my father likes to say: To those that have: more. Manchester City are owned by HH Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. His Highness runs the United Arab Emirates leading integrated power and wealth company; the estimates say that he has put 750 million into Manchester City. If that makes them considerably richer than almost anybody, and it does , we ourselves are not as poor as we used to be, not by a good stretch. Our chairman, a local man, has been associated with the club for twenty or thirty years, through good and through bad, and at the moment it is very good indeed: he and his family own Bet365, an internet gambling operation. It might not be black gold gushing out of the ground, but it is a version of it, mining money from desperate, sad, lonely and even some happy souls who are sat at home in front of the television and the computer screen, gambling-in-play on twenty four markets! Clicking the mouse twenty-four-seven, 3-6-5. Place Bet Now! And another score flushes into the arms of Stoke City FC thanks very much. Premiership Football is very expensive to run; if it cannot be supported by majesty or oligarch, or both, then it needs to be funded by a business that turns over as many units as possible. Its difficult to dream of a revenue stream that is more apt than online punting. But for all the stakes that go south on the 2.20 at Doncaster, oil & royalty is richer and Manchester City can flash the cash all they like. Some of their players - the Argentinian Carlos Tevez, the Spaniard David Silva - were purchased on deals that would equate to the re-sale value of our entire first team. On this basis, our feelings (as fans) as we go into this match might be antipathy-verging-on-loathing fuelled by regional resentment and exacerbated by the green-eyed monster. And maybe there is some of that about it. But as to hatred, which you do get, against certain teams, of this I think there is nothing. It would be that way if we were playing Manchester United, but not with their nouveau riche neighbours. I was in a bar in Turin when United beat Bayern Munich with the two late goals in the 1999 Champions League final. United had knocked Juventus out in the semi, so the bar owner was quite clear in his mind who he didnt want to win, but, on the other hand, that would require him to support ze Germans which was an equally unappealing outlook. But in the end he discovered that this was where his emotions lay: he cheered when the Bavarians scored. Not loudly, but still, a little I shared the bar owners pre-match dilemma but in my own case, I found I could not cheer for Bayern either which meant that all I was left with was to dream of a world in which both teams could lose but in which the reds lost worse. So, if we were playing United in the final my feelings would be clear cut and pure. Like the Conservative Party, Manchester United will always be there and they will always have their legion of followers but though we walk the same streets and breathe the same air we live in separate worlds. Give me the slightest opening (an enamel lapel badge the size of a button will do it) and Ill talk football to any stranger on a train, but I never engage in conversation with Manchester United fans, firstly, for all the same reasons I do not wish to break bread with David Cameron or his cabinet - they are smug, they are arrogant, they are cosseted, they have a repulsive sense of entitlement - and secondly, because they are so boring . In order for the United fans to feel like any other football fan (s)he has to invent a problem: Hes playing Rooney out of position. Hes lost the plot! Manchester United are not me and they are not you either. Manchester City are not Manchester United, not yet; it will take at least two decades of more-or-less unbroken dominance for them to even begin to think about thinking about it, and for the rest of us to begin to feel about them as we do about United. Perhaps it will happen, perhaps it will not. Its of no particular matter here anyway because the pertinent hinterland so far as this match is concerned is that City are an outfit with a reputation for providing unintentional moments of comedy and have had little enough to boast about recently for all that they might regard themselves as a massive club. Its thirty-five years since theyve won a major trophy, a matter that their neighbours are happy to remind them about anytime. They are underdogs who have a habit of losing to underdogs, are deadly when it comes to aiming guns at their feet, and are not even the biggest fish in their own bowl (we can claim that much, at least). As they enter this FA Cup final, then, for me their identity consists of a charming clownishness blessed with a recent windfall and the sense that it is more than likely to go wrong in the end. In short, theyre as close to ideal opponents as you could get, unless you wanted someone you felt sure you could beat. They are not dull and dreary without a song or a personality as would have been the case if, for instance, we were playing Middlesboro. Neither are we dull, we never have been, and in the past three years since joining the Premiership our fans have acquired an enhanced reputation of a very particular kind - for being loud, for being ferocious, and for being worth something to the team, especially at home where opposition fans will note an atmosphere of menace and intimidation even when we are being quite laid back. The loudest and most ferocious we have ever been during these Premiership years was in fact against Manchester City when one of ours was sent off and one of theirs - who should have gone with him - was not. In a throwback caldron of racket the crowd roared our ten men to victory while their lot mocked us for losing our longthrow (it was Rory Delap who was sent off). So, as far as the supporter groups on either side are concerned, theres a certain kind of pre-final equality; if you belong to a normally-bonded set of fans like most of us do, Manchester City are me and they are you. On top of that I liketheir lot for specific reasons, even though I remember them well, from tears gone by. Three matches between our two clubs: One: February, 1975 I am a twelve year-old standing on the vast wide pungent terrace of the Boothen End at the old Victoria Ground. I dont know it, but Stoke are entering the endgame of their greatest years to date. The Potters play in shirts of plain red and white stripes in bands of two inch width and are a team with flair and style. At the end of the season they will finish fifth in the top division; three years earlier they won the League Cup, the only significant silverware the club has ever collected. The pitch is a bog, the weather is nasty. Alan Hudson, a seventies playboy who has found his way from the Kings Road to the Potteries, runs the match, taking liberties and the piss by turns and we beat Manchester City 4-0. At some point, perhaps fifteen minutes from time, the entire away end decamps. Half an hour later I see what they have been up to. They have rampaged through Stoke town centre and they have smashed the place up. Bourne Sports, my favourite shop, has had its picture window put through. This sort of hooliganism is routine in the seventies, but all the same this is epic, they have turned Stoke into Beirut. This is imagery that puts a scar into my brain. I am just old enough to be embarking upon awaydays with Stoke. But not to Maine Road (originally: Dog Kennel Lane), Moss Side. Never go to their place, I say to myself. Never. It must be dangerous up there. Very, very dangerous. Two: Boxing Day, 1988 A traditional day for a big crowd and Manchester City travel down in their thousands. Almost to a man they are all carrying inflatable bananas, the big ones, three or four feet long. Their fans have recently instigated a craze for inflatables which has spread to other football clubs - in Norwich (I am just about to move there) the locals have taken to carrying blow-up yellow Canaries, the club emblem. This is to get the concept wholly wrong. The beauty of the Man City inflatable is that bananas have nothing to do with their club, the whole thing is simply absurd, possibly absurdist, maybe even situationist: these are the post-post punk years after all and certain working-class punters such as myself have heard about such concepts through the Sex Pistols and Malcolm McClaren, or through Tony Wilson and Joy Division. Its not impossible that there may even be something in these bananas that goes beyond football, which has political intent: perhaps they represent an air-filled ironic corrective to those racists who used to throw actual bananas at black players. My preferred theory on them though is one that I hear the writer Paul Morley mention on Late Review one night many years later when the banana army somehow re-emerges (no doubt they are reviewing another book or another film about the madforitness of Madchester). Some mentalist fan was off his head, picked one up from a fruit and veg stall on a Saturday afternoon, took it to the ground, and it caught on like wildfire. This is Morleys explanation and its one Im happy with, not just because it seems most likely, but because it encapsulates the improvisational nature of football supporting in what Ill have to call the old days; you can imagine for yourself the detail of the internet discipline and the protocols that were put in place in order for punters to acquire tickets for this FA Cup final without my going into it in minute detail, or in any detail whatsoever. This is football these days: just before the match kicked off an army of stewards confiscated a giant flag that was being passed over our crowd, by the crowd, because of the danger it represented. Anyway, whatever the inflatable etymology of the Banana Army really is, the scene that confronted me as I parked my old Saab in the streets beside the Victoria Ground and double-locked all the doors to secure the vehicle from whatever it was that Manchester City fans would do to it was as follows. I walked round a corner and I walked straight into this: Cmon then cmon lets av it lets av it then. Av it! Two gangs of lads fronting each other up. Each faction goading the other in the familiar one-foot-forward two-step-backwards quickstep that precipitates the ruck. The thing, though, was this: the Manchester City gang were carrying the inflatable bananas. They were jousting them as if they were weapons of war or otherwise (on the backstep) they were wanking them off as though they might be exceptional pricks. Between trying to pop them with the burning ends of their cigarettes, our lot swore violently at the bananas. Though I circled the scene with caution (I did not wish to become a casualty of a one-sided parthenocarpic war) I continued to watch because I was learning something, which was this: it is impossible to be genuinely violent and aggressive if you are carrying an inflatable banana; equally it is impossible to be genuinely violent and aggressive towards the holder of an inflatable banana. The rumble never got going, it simply petered out into an episode of threats to see you later you banana wanker. Once you have called someone a banana wanker, you are half way down the road to reconciliation and friendship. At half-time we were a goal down. A mashed up Mancunian invaded the playing area fellating his banana. Get that fucking queer off the pitch, a voice called out behind me. It might have been a voice filled with the usual aggression, but actually the message was delivered with festive goodwill. In the second half the Manchester City defenders invited the Stoke strikers to a ten-minute episode of shooting-in during which we scored three times. Final score: Stoke 3-1 Manchester City. Everything ties together through football. I have another memory seared into this day. My son is six months old at the time and he has a chest infection (or what GPs liked to call a virus in the vogue of the day). We have been given doctors instructions to hold Jack over steaming water morning and night to help ventilate his chest. The water from the tap at my mums house (where we are staying) isnt hot enough to create steam (everyone has used the shower) so I half-fill it and top it up from the kettle and then I hold Jack too close over the wash hand basin and in so doing I manage to dangle his foot into the water. I can still hear him scream. Up at Casualty they rush him through the adult wounded (pub drunks and domestics - Christmas is a difficult time, they say) and they bandage him expertly, lightly, delicately, and quickly and they fuss and coo over him. Ah the poor little dab. Afterwards I phone a friend who is in social work. I have developed an acute anxiety that hell be taken away from me for this act of child abuse. The friend says that this is highly, highly unlikely and that anyway it was a pretty stupid thing for a doctor to suggest, wasnt it: in all likelihood it was an accident waiting to happen. Her reassuring words make me feel a bit better but they do not prevent me from throwing up some while later, several times. Inflatable bananas, scalded toes, vomit, football all linked in my mind. Three: May1998 It is the last round of fixtures. As the match kicks off both Manchester City and Stoke are in the bottom three of the second tier and that is where each remains ninety minutes later at the conclusion of the League season. The Sky Blues win the game 5-2 but the result isnt enough to save them from relegation because they are relying on other teams to help them out and none of those other teams oblige. They have put the Sold Out signs up on their four thousand official ticket allocation but plenty of them have got their hands on tickets for the home areas and aggravation breaks out all over the place. A decade on, inflatable bananas are a distant memory and the fighting is mainly for real and is unpleasant. The result and the accompanying crowd scenes are described as a lowest ebb for both teams, though I believe we discovered some lower ebbs over the subsequent years. Stoke were in that wretched (old third) division for four seasons. Manchester City bounced straight back out with a Wembley play-off final win over Gillingham: Gillingham were 2-0 up going into the ninetieth minute. City scored twice in injury time and then won 3-1 on penalties. Tony Pulis, our current manager, was the manager of Gillingham that day. Perhaps he has got his extraordinary episode of bad luck out of the way so far as games between teams managed by himself playing against Manchester City at Wembley are concerned. Pulis is in his second period in charge at Stoke; the fans didnt want him the first time (a couple of years year prior to his engagement he had turned us down for Bristol City, which did nothing to endear him) and they didnt want him the second time either because they had already seen more than enough of his footballing philosophy, a reductive and basic brand of attritional football that bore as much relation to Alan Hudson running the show as a cat does to a herring. Pulis version of the beautiful game consisted of a variant of gridiron: static, reliant on set plays and muscle, devoid of poetry. I took the Magic Bus down to Greece when I was a twenty year-old. A thirty quid ticket bought me a three-day road trip on a non-stop ride from Camden Town to a dirt car park next to the Acropolis. The journey included a twenty-four hour crawl through the single-carriageway of the old Yugoslavia. There was no air-con, the sun was burning, and all you could buy at a petrol station to slake your thirst was warm peach juice. Dont drink the water, said the sign in the toilets, but you wouldnt anyway because no water ran. When I finally alighted in Athens I had everything that nobody wants: greasy hair, body odour, bad breath, zits, constipation, a headache and a line of sweat on my brow. Many a time paying to watch Pulisball has been as attractive a proposition as kissing me would have been in that moment. But, like the long, hot and unexpectedly powerful shower that lay waiting in the youth hostel in Athens, and the sleep on the roof under the stars that followed, there have been great and unexpected days too, and, to be accurate about the matter, the trajectory since Pulis has been grinding away on the Stoke City training ground and directing operations from the technical area on match days has seen the club go in one direction and one direction only: upwards. Now he has taken us to a place we have never been in one-hundred and forty-eight tears. It remains true to say that he is only ever one brainwave away from playing a striker on the left wing, but all gaffers have their foibles and there are no arguments anymore about whether Pulis is any good as a football manager or not. He is excellent and he is getting better. This year, on occasion, we have even played something that looks like football. * In that single season they spent with us down in the old third division Manchester City filled their own ground with thirty thousand fans and travelled away in huge numbers. We remember them for that with huge respect. On the road, for use at places like Northampton and Walsall and Wrexham, their fans came up with a song that I particularly admired and that lodged itself into my mind. Not really here; were not really here It was a lovely, surreal coping mechanism - a lyric related through their supporter DNA to the carrying of an inflatable banana - and a song that we Stoke supporters could sing now, should we so wish, not as coping mechanism, but as an expression of genuine disbelief. Are we really where we are? The Preparation Technically speaking, and with six league matches remaining (two of which were to be played after the FA Cup final, since the fixture now no longer carries enough cachet to close the season out), Stoke were not entirely safe from relegation. Though the threat was mainly mathematical - and in truth it would involve some odd goings on for us to get sucked in, and there were definitely worse teams than us down there - fans do still tend to fret if they can find something to fret about. The fear was soon put to bed: in league matches between the semi-final and the final we accumulated enough points via a pair of draws away to Villa and Blackpool as well as a facile 3-0 victory over a very poor Wolves team to pull clear of danger. And then our old nemesis from those semi-finals in the seventies came to visit us on the weekend before the final. A huge swelling of renewed animosity has sprung up between ourselves and Arsenal over the past eighteen months or so. Our captain, the young centre-back Ryan Shawcross, went in on a challenge with the young Arsenal player Aaron Ramsey in the corresponding fixture last year and Shawcross inadvertently broke Ramseys leg. It was a traumatic moment that saw the Arsenal mans limb snapped out of all natural form as both tibia and fibula were snapped. Shawcross was in tears as he left the field (he was sent off for the challenge). Stoke did everything right in the moments that followed: while the Arsenal players, including their captain Cesc Fabregas, surrounded the referee to make sure that he dismissed Shawcross, it was our own midfielder Glenn Whelan who tended to Ramsey, cradling his head and shielding him from the sight of his injury. Afterwards all the words from Stoke were of conciliation and apology while Arsne Wenger went out of his way to accuse Shawcross of malice aforethought and of a thuggish brutality that is simply not in his make up. I have watched him week in and week out for years; he is talked of as future England material, he is not even all that clumsy, and he is certainly not malicious. The tackle took place at speed and was badly timed, but that was the extent of it. Ramsey himself refused Shawcross subsequent apology, but thats his prerogative. It took Wenger days to become calm enough so that in his more considered afterwords he could merely accuse Stoke City of being a rugby team; I have alluded to set pieces already myself, but that is not what he meant. I used to have a great deal of respect for Wenger and for all the delight he has bought to the pitch through the metre of the football his teams produce, for the abstract geometry of it, but he has been falling short of expectations for too long and the strain is telling. For six years Arsenal have won nothing and Wenger has become an ungracious individual with an unattractive, one-eyed way of seeing the world. It is this local context on top of the historical legacy that puts me into a very good mood as we score goals and songs rain down on the French managers head. He was serenaded in crude terms which were a bit basic for my liking, even if he was asking for it, but after this warm up the crowd developed a new lively repertoire that exuded a certain je ne sais quoi and va va voom. After our striker Kenwyne Jones headed in the first from a free-kick (he is six-foot two but he did not even need to jump so lethargic was the Arsenal defending) it was, One-nil to the rugby team. For every foul that Arsenal committed a commentary was provided on Wengers famous partial vision: He didnt see that, he didnt see that, Arsne Wenger, he didnt see that , and the corollary was also aired, as appropriate, when our own players were penalised: I bet he saw that, I bet he saw that...etc. After the second goal, a beautiful swerving shot into the top corner unleashed on the run by Arsenal cast-off Jermaine Pennant (signed from Real Zaragoza this season, Pennant is a superb winger, whose free-kick set up the first for Jones), it was a quick Score from a throw in, we only score from a throw in followed by a rapid-fire Two-nil to the rugby team followed by a rendition of a song I have never heard sung at the Britannia Stadium before, the rugby union anthem that England fans use: Swing low, sweet chariot There was irony, there was wit, there were a couple of rounds of our terrace anthem, Delilah; there was joy there was fun we had Arsenal on the run. In the second half, on the seventieth minute, the mood changed. A cold white panic swept through the crowd as the excellent young Arsenal prospect Jack Wilshere went in on Pennant with his studs up. Our winger took exception to this by shoving his forehead into Wilsheres face. It was not exactly a headbutt, but these moments are judgement calls, and it could easily be interpreted as such. It was not a certainty for a sending off, but that was a definite possibility and if the possibility came to pass then Pennant would be suspended for the final. Here was a disaster in the making, a turn of events that would strip us of half of our available width and flair. And, as things stood, we could be without the other half anyway: Matthew Etherington was on the treatment table where hed been for twelve days since picking up an injury in the facile win over Wolves; there was nothing in Stoke-on-Trent that was causing more concern than the state of the left wingers hamstring. The confrontation between Wilshere and Pennant took place on the touchline directly in front of us; Shawcross came over to speak to the referee. We could not hear what he said, but anyone could guess. Its the FA Cup final youll be putting him out of ref, please (hands together, gesture of prayer), please dont do that. As he awaited his fate and the crowd held its breath Pennant put on a virtuoso performance along the touchline. He is slight, he has many tattoos, including a selection that rise from his neck, he is rather beautiful and he is very cool. He is so rich that he forgot he owned a Porsche which he had left behind him down in Spain. Give him one change of outfit into a sequined bodysuit and a time machine and he could step directly into seventies soul outfit Tavares. His cameo consisted of an exasperated mime along the touchline. Head bobbing, shoulders dropped, no eye contact with anyone. Awaiting his fate. He was being persecuted here, for sure, for being ex-Arsenal, for the goal he had already scored, for the one he had set up, for having the nattiest hair. But, be that as it may, most crucially, and beyond any reasonable doubt, he was innocent. The ref fingered his card pocket and went walkabout. Eventually he flashed yellow to each of the protagonists and awarded the free-kick to us. Pennant fired the dead ball across the goalmouth and as soon as it went into touch he was called off with a level of urgency that suggested his wife was about to give birth. He left the field to a standing ovation. He had had a very good match but it was not that; it was because once he was in the dugout no further damage could occur and he would be available to play next week. We scored once more - a bullet hit from journeyman striker Jon Walters, who Pulis picked up from Ipswich Town for a figure that passes as next to nothing these days, three million. Walters has the look of the boxing ring about him, is completely tireless, and makes the iconic gesture of the signing of the cross when he scores, which, for my money, is the most taking of celebrations, invoking any number of deities and honouring the memories of the dead. Walters attracted flak from the terraces at the outset of the season when he joined Stoke because he was regarded as not good enough but he has grown on everybody, and has been in scintillating form for a couple of months now since his confidence grew exponentially after he scored a marvellous individual goal against Chelsea; he ran the ball from the half-way line and went by about seventy million rubles of defender, midfielder and goalkeeper in so doing. This was the moment in which he came to believe that he belonged in the company he was keeping. He is an excellent soldier to have on your side. Walters goal was scored immediately after Arsenal had pulled one back. They went from 2-0 down to 2-1 to 3-1 behind in a matter of a minute. At full time any impartial assessor would report that we had out-battled, out-sung, outplayed and outclassed the Londoners throughout, but the biggest cheer of the afternoon was not for any of the three goals nor for any other moment of skill nor for the outcome at the final whistle; it was for the substitution of Pennant. Our prospects at Wembley would look very different without him in the team; if anyone needed reminding of that, the roar of the crowd as he crossed the field towards the dugouts left the matter in no doubt. We beat Arsenal and we beat them hollow. Pulverising the Gunners was as exceptional a preparation for an FA Cup final as could be devised; thrilling in itself and with the added effect of getting the long-standing but for that lot we should have been in the Cup Final years ago monkey off our backs. You could not dream it better. The Final Journey My normal travelling companions from Norwich to the midlands (and to all points) are fellow Stoke fans Graham - who I met on the road on the way to Peterborough United for a night match ten years ago - and his stepson Matty. Graham is a few years younger than me, Matty is thirteen: Graham has done a straight-up job of indoctrinating the boy. Mattys mother supports Sutton United for reasons to do with being born down that way (there could be no other reason could there?) and Norwich City have been in the doldrums for several of the past few years so perhaps his task has been easier than mine when I converted my own son to the Potters, when Norwich were a division higher than us some while ago. Jack is now a music-industry Mogul who manages Manchester United-supporting Tinchy Stryder. He was vaguely hoping that United would beat Manchester City in the other semi-final (the day before we beat Bolton) as that would have inevitably led to a hospitality box and all that goes with it. But he is more than happy enough at the way things have turned out because we feel we have better prospect of winning the match the way things have turned out. As the cup run developed and as the quarter-final loomed, Graham asked me an effectively rhetorical question given all known history: Would I take Matty to Wembley should the unthinkable happen? By this he meant should Stoke make it to the final because if that came to pass then the unhappy facts were that Graham would be in America on a work conference (about human genomes) and that most specifically, in terms of the ninety minutes of the match itself, he was scheduled to be on a flight from New York to the mid-west for that exact ninety minutes of all eternity. Poor timing by any measure; he would not even be able to make it to a bar to drink Budweiser while watching the soccer game on a plasma screen in the company of indifferent men wearing checked shirts and baseball caps. I had slept badly all week and especially badly on the eve of the match. This is untypical. I am an eight-hours-a-night man and am far too old and far too experienced to be getting excited and nervous about football matches; still, neither of these considerations altered the fact that the birds were only just getting started with their singing when I opened my eyes. I wondered how our players were sleeping. Better than me probably; they are only passing through, its not a life sentence like it is for fans. I watched breakfast television where I saw Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini talk about what it would mean to deliver silverware to a club that had been starved of success for so long. The Italian has been in English football for eighteen months or so. He said that it would be big to win the FA Final. The FA Final, eh, I said to myself with a shake of the head as I assembled a couple of organic sausage and scrambled egg sandwiches for the road as I sipped my third espresso of the morning and as I put together a further thermos of coffee to keep me going. It was just after nine as I set off to get Matty. It felt as though I had been up all night but I felt good, fit for whatever lay ahead. I had been making preparations to stay in shape for the match: I had lain of the booze all week. My car was parked round the corner in a very quiet street. Theres only one house beside the bay in which Id left the rusting banger. As I opened the hatchback to drape a scarf over the rear headrests a builder with a Black Country accent manifested himself at the gates of the single house to wish me well. I think youll do it, he said. The airwaves of the sports radio stations had been full of pundits all week long declaring the competition ruined and devalued because there were Premiership fixtures being played earlier in the day (before our 15.00 kick-off), fixtures in which, on an under-card with the apparent potential to upstage the main event, Manchester United could secure the title for an excessive nineteenth time. But even in a silent side street in Norwich where nothing whatsoever was at stake the first stranger I came across knew what this day was actually about. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Manchester United. The business of football might have changed, but the business of football has also stayed the same. It was FA Cup Final Day. And a lovely morning it was too, blue sky, sun shining. I turned out of the side street and a van driver honked at me, not because I got in his way, but because of the scarf on the headrests. Your team are in the FA Cup final, the honk said, Good luck to you. All roads south from the midlands and from the north-west would become a caravan of coaches and cars and mini-buses, but even those travelling in from odd angles like ours could have their journey acknowledged and recognised by neutral observers. I imagined those van drivers watching the match later on television - they would remember seeing us and they would support Stoke too: the slightest angle in is all it takes to get a fix on a sporting contest. But the wider public would support the Potters anyway, unlovable though our image may sometimes be (because of the Pulisball), because in this encounter we are underdogs and supporting the underdog is so hardwired into the national psyche that if there isnt one available we will construct one anyway, as happened, for instance, with Ivan Lendl twenty-five years ago. The Czech tennis robot could win anywhere except at Wimbledon because he couldnt serve-and-volley and had decided that he loathed grass and was constantly trying to tap blades out of the treads of his trainers as if it clagged in them like clay. Lendl was initially unpopular at Wimbledon for all of these reasons, as well as for the tedium of his baseline game, but once it became apparent that he could never win in SW19 the crowd began to love him, managing to convert him into an underdog when he was actually the number one player in the world. To pile on the pathos, in the two consecutive finals he managed to claw himself into he lost abjectly in straight sets to grass court naturals (Boris Becker and Pat Cash). As it was for Ivan Lendl in 1987, so it is for us today. Its unusual to walk about in a Stoke City replica shirt and feel popular; its unusual for me to walk about in a Stoke City replica shirt at all because I am a middle-class faerie, as my fellow Stoke-based Stokies frequently remind me, and as such I have stripped pine floorboards underfoot at home and attend matches wearing a black polo neck and a cravat. But not today; today I am wearing the shirt (one of Grahams, last seasons, he has them all). I slung a black Nicole Farhi blouson over it in order to feel like my normal self and a white t-shirt underneath to negate the strange sensation of nylon-to-flesh. Or is it neoprene? None of the several labels inside actually say what it is made of, but there is small black tag that you must not cut out , a tag that says: Love is authentique - Do Not Fake - my LE COQ BRAND - produit garanti. Garanti, eh? In combination with the Nicole Farhi, its an ensemble authentique . Matty is home alone: his mum is out on a training run. Graham is not here, but neither is he in NYC; he is about to touch down at Heathrow. He called me up one afternoon just before the tickets went on sale and asked how much I would consider paying for a flight back to England for the game. How much would I pay to see Stoke in a final which all history tells will be the first and last time it will ever happen? Is that what you mean? I said. Yes. I was driving. I pulled up and leaned on the car near a butchers shop. I picked blisters of rust off the roof rails. I am not so flush at the moment, but I have been flush in the past, so I cast my mind back to those days. Two-and-a-half, three grand, I said. Three-and-a-half grand, at a push. Maybe four. Oh, Ahah! said Graham. Hed only shelled six hundred-and-fifty for his flight; now he could regard this as a bargain. * Just the boring old Cup Final today then, mate, I said as Matty jumped into the passenger seat. Yep, he replied. I was carrying six tickets: Mattys, Mine, Jacks, Grahams, Grahams sister Lesleys and Grahams brother-in-law Davids. I had somehow become responsible for the block-booking, I did not know where to put them best for safety. They started off in my bag (they were still in the envelope in which they had not been delivered when the postman arrived in the only five minutes I was out of the house on Thursday morning) and then I nearly forgot to pick them up from the Post Office Collection Office the day before. This is the kind of person I am; I was once talking on my mobile phone when I suddenly started checking my pockets to see where my mobile phone was; the more I checked the pockets - where the phone wasnt - the more frantic I became that Id lost the bloody thing. It wasnt until I told the person I was speaking to what it was that I was worried about that they put me in the picture. Our plan was to drive to Watford and from there to get the tube into Wembley. That meant I had to transfer the tickets from car to train and look after them on public transport. Do you want to take care of these tickets? I asked Matty. No, he replied. We pulled in for fuel at the petrol station at the Fiveways roundabout at the foot of Thetford Forest. A man rolled down his window. Good luck, he said. I (obscenity) hate Man City, he said. Our next stop was at the services on the M25 at South Mimms. The man walking through the entrance doors beside me was wearing Manchester City colours. I was on my phone, he was on his. We did not speak to each other; instead we shook hands as if we were the managers of our respective teams before taking to our technical areas. There were many more Manchester City fans than Stoke fans in the place. In fact, the more I looked around, the more I noticed that we were the only two which seemed odd, and unfair. At a Burger King outlet Matty purchased his first fast food of the day. What is that? I asked. Its a chicken burger, he replied. Did you have breakfast? Sausages, he said. Oh, and beans. I fingered my back pocket, my blood ran cold. I fingered the other back pocket. The tickets were still there. The phone call had been from Sky Sports. A runner had emailed me earlier in the week asking if I would say a few words in the pre-match build up. Id emailed back to say Sure, no problem, but I had heard no more so I assumed they had found someone better, more interesting, famous. But no, they were simply as disorganised as I am. How long would it be until I could get to the roof of the Premier Inn hotel right by the Wembley Park tube station, where they were set up, the runner asked. It was half-eleven. One oclock, I said. I have a friends son with me. Is it alright? Yes, he said, But the security are heavy down there: give us a call when you get in if you cant get past. Dyou want to be on television? I said to Matty as we rolled out of the services. He removed the repulsive-looking chicken item from his mouth long enough to say, No way, I hate publicity. Watford tube station is hard to find, set in the very heart of Metroland itself. On an A4 google map that I printed out at too big a scale to be of any particular use - these fragments I have shored against navigating the day - I find that Ive managed to scribble t he building is typical red-brick and was designed by C. W. Clark. I must have been to wikipedia first. The station designed by Mr Clark is just as described, has that lovely dead atmosphere of the end of the line, and the station staff have a languorous air: you may have football colours on but its of no matter to them; theres an FA Cup final every year, is there not? If the carriages are not rammed full of football fans, football fans seem to be the only kind of people that there are on the train; there are no other civilians. The banks of seats in front of us are taken by eight Stoke supporters who strike me as particularly nervous. One woman looks as if she is about to vomit. A small kid asks if he can go to Madame Tussauds and his dad says, No, not today mate because its the Cup Final and we havent got time, thats why not. I begin a mental count-down of the teams we beat on the way to the final in case the Sky guy asks me about it: Cardiff (2-0 away in extra time of a replay, one of the worst matches in history); Brighton (comfortable 3-0 home win); West Ham in the last eight (2-1, could have been a draw, possibly, I watched it in Stoke-on-Trent on the sofa at home, holding the hand of my Mother, who used to take us down to the matches when we were kids: she is very unwell). The Hammers had beaten us easily in the League the week before and there were rumblings against Pulis before the cup tie. But in the two months between that quarter-final and today he has been elevated to possibly the best manager weve ever had. Bolton in the semi (5-0). I count the matches out on my fingers, theres one missing. I ask the other Stokies what it is. They cannot remember it either, until one of them does. Wolves in the fourth round, 1-0. Huth with his head and then Sorensen saved the penalty late on, remember. These are the knowledges we keep in out heads, this is the psychic trivia that rattles along in the caravan of football. I was not at the Wolves game, and I was not the only one. It was late January and nobody cared. The attendance was 11,967, quite, quite dismal. I picked up on a Stoke win bet though, not knowing til later that I owed my luck to a low dive to his left from a thirty-four year-old Dane. Sorensen is our second choice keeper so far as the Premiership is concerned but he has played in every round of the Cup and his reward is that he will be in the starting eleven today. Eventually I did lose that phone, the one that I thought I had lost when I was, in fact, using it, and now I have a new one. Text messages and bbms and emails pop in, each to a different ping. Where r u? / Were at Ealing / Having a fry up / Just seen a Ford Focus hand-painted red and white in matt emulsion! / Ey up duck / Wish I could be there with you / Love and kisses / Good luck. I check my back pocket for the nineteenth time. Theyre still there. Matty is counting the stops on his tube map: Croxley; Moor Park; Northwood; Northwood Hills; Pinner; North Harrow; Harrow-on-the-Hill (a British Rail interchange where hundreds of Manchester City fans pile on singing their terrace anthem Blue Moon , a Rogers and Hart ballad from 1934; why? - a full moon, a night match, the colour of their shirts); Preston Road; Wembley Park. Mattys grandparents are from Hong Kong, his birth father is English, I think, and lives in America (he rarely gets a mention). Today, with Graham absent, Matty will refer to my friend, who I think of as his step-father, as my Dad and it takes me a moment to work out who he means. I will mention this to Graham later. He does not have children of his own but he has done a proper job with the difficult task of stepping in; I know it will make him proud. Matty gazes out of the window. He has a shock of black hair and an aura of insouciance; its as if the Cup Final is an everyday event. It crosses my mind to realise that this is what he will believe the world is like, because this is what his world islike, his memories of today will be real memories and they will be better memories than getting knocked out by Arsenal in the semi-finals, whatever the outcome. 12.50. Just over two hours to kick off and the security at the Premier Inn , Rooms from 29 a Night let us pass without a murmur . Theres a marquee out front and inside that marquee its Bacchanalian. Bacchus is another name for Dionysus who was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, and of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. Bacchus is exactly the sort of Stokie who would have a BAC 4US personal registration plate on a Porsche he had forgotten about that hed left parked up at the Acropolis. How do people drink so much and still manage to watch football? That is what I am thinking as I navigate my way through the weaving bodies. Stay there, I say to Matty while I use the toilet. As I enter, one of the two latrines begins to flood. Someone has put toilet paper into the drain holes. Why? I step aside, sharply. I am on the phone. What? I am saying, to nobody. There is no signal. I have the phone held in the crook of my neck and I back out of the place taking care to touch nothing. I phone the runner again but there is still no contact. Now its 13.00. Matty and I take the lift to the top where communication is better. I will be with you in four seconds, the runner says. I count him down, three-two-one and here he is, coming through the double doors, shaking hands. Just in time, live in five, he says, leading us out onto the flat roof of the hotel while saying what he has to say about Health and Safety. Dont jump or anything. The day before, I heard a pop psychologist on the radio saying that the human brain can take in eleven million pieces of information at any one moment but, even by generous estimates, we are consciously aware of maybe 40 of these. Forty from the Rooftop The view is beautiful The stadium is beautiful The arc seems profound The soundmans skin is bad skin He has the intonation of a Manc But I immediately like him He looks knackered He takes a Nicorette A steel band is playing Im introduced to the camera girl Her hair is in a bob There is beer on my shoes, from the foyer The camera girl, I cant remember her name The sky is dramatic And the roof of the tube station There is more blue than red Pigeon shit everywhere Do I still have the tickets? Feel my pocket The sound of a song It is Delilah rising from below I must take a picture An aerial shot of the singing crowd It is starting to rain This phone has a camera but how does it work? We are in the Cup Final Matty is reading a newspaper Can you close up your jacket? What for no colours? No for the flapping, for the wind, for the sound Everything is temporary The presenter arrives He looks knackered His tie is purple His shoes are scuffed His name is Nick Man United are losing; Blackpool are up We go live in three And now to Stephen Foster He has written a book I tell Nick about Graham and his flight from New York. That is what it means says Nick, Isnt it? Its a big, big day. Indeed it is, I say. The biggest I have known. I am not normally emotional (I hear myself say as much) but today is different; I am nervous; its the Cup Final, I say, and I gesture with my arm, backwards - look, theres the stadium - as if to prove it. Later when I watch this footage I see that I look at least as knackered as Nick; I am the poor mans Alan Pardew. I look like I have suffered a long, dark, punishing night of the soul. And I have not even had a drink. Out in the street we find Graham and his family mobbed up by a red brick wall near the underpass beside the tube station. Grahams Mum is in a wheelchair because she has dodgy knees. I lean down to kiss her. Her granddaughter, Emily, is taking her to a different part of the ground from where we will be, where the wheelchairs can go. Graham, having crossed the Atlantic twice in six days, and having picked up a cold while he was at it, looks more knackered than the Manc soundman, Nick the presenter, myself and Alan Pardew combined but seeing him greet Matty after their week apart is lovely, and then Jack the Mogul, my own son, who is coming in from Norwich, on a different timescale to me, for reasons that no one could ever understand, from a book that nobody could write, randomly bumps into me in the road. Oh! I say, Hello! Oh! He replies, Hello back! I kiss the boy on his cheeks, and, with a proper sense of relief and an absurd sense of achievement, I hand over the fifth of the six tickets; so far as that trauma goes I can call it mission accomplished. We walk up Wembley Way and the day begins again. By the statue of Bobby Moore we meet our dear friends Old Stokie, Swiss Tony and all the other legends and we wish each other well and we say we will reassemble here afterwards whatever the outcome. Our seats are five rows back, just to the right of the goal. Someone I know is sitting immediately in front of us, the old message-board legend MCF74, real name Merkin, a big lump who accidentally broke Jacks arm in a 5-a-side ten years ago, a matter about which there always has to be mention. The few drops of rain have gone and the sun is shining right into our faces. Graham hands me his phone, asks me to take a picture of him against the red and white ocean. A pastel hue is no colour for a football shirt but I have to concede that their lot look good in the other half of the stadium; the one-colour top constructs a solid block of crowd. They are in solid voice too, matching each Delilah with a Blue Moon . I had offered Mum to watch the match in Stoke, in front of the television. Dont be silly, she said, Now go away now before you make me cry. I call her up while Abide With Me is being sung so she can hear it and be here. Just before kick-off the Manchester City fans in the lower tier turn their backs to the pitch, link arms, and jump up and down in a gesture called the Poznan, a terrace antic theyve picked up from Polish side Lech Poznan they played in the Europa League earlier in the season. Our lot ask them what the fucking hell is that. Myself, I find it strangely moving. The Final