Wanderers vs The Royal Engineers: The beginning of football’s oldest competition

Today, 150 years after the first ever FA Cup final, Mick O'Hare tells the story of the almost unrecognisable match that marked the beginning of the competition we still know and love

A football match in 1872: an amateur ethos underpinned by ‘Muscular Christianity’ (Getty)

Arsenal goalkeeper Geoff Barnett threw himself to the left, but the ball was out of reach. Allan Clarke’s header from near the penalty spot nestled in the back of the net and BBC commentator David Coleman uttered his trademark “one-nil”. The team everyone loved to hate, Leeds United, took victory in the 1972 FA Cup Final, on the competition’s 100th anniversary.

For supporters of a certain vintage that centenary cup final seems like only yesterday. The hoo-hah surrounding the match consumed media outlets as England’s two leading clubs won through to the decider of football’s oldest competition. Both terrestrial television companies – for there were only two, BBC and ITV – started their coverage in mid-morning, preparing for the 3pm kick off. Commemorative coins were issued, collector’s cards of erstwhile champions were printed and exchanged by school kids, previous winning goal scorers and managers were dragged on to radio for interviews, special supplements appeared in the newspapers, and the match was shown all over the world. The FA Cup final was England’s greatest sporting occasion bar none, and everybody tuned in to watch. The curtains in front rooms were drawn, lest the sunlight spoil the images on new-fangled colour TVs, off-licences were emptied of all their beer and the streets devoid of cars and pedestrians.

Yet, although for so many 60-something football fans that weekend will be impinged on their memories, they will also be acutely aware it was an entirely different era for their sport. The FA Cup today is no longer the premier competition in England, the once-acclaimed “magic of the cup” has been diminishing ever more rapidly since the turn of the century. Clubs and their managers – indeed their accountants – know that qualification for the European Champions League or avoiding relegation from the Premiership take precedence over a frivolous knockout competition that carries fewer rewards. Whereas winning cup matches was once a priority, nowadays lesser members of expensive playing squads are often trundled out to fulfil fixtures in the earlier rounds, with success sometimes taken as a meagre bonus, other times even an inconvenience. So-called giant-killing, where a team from a lower division beats one from the Premiership, is now far more likely.