With Arsenal and Aston Villa competing for FA Cup glory this weekend, BBC Sport has taken an in-depth look at the first ever final 143 years ago with the help of De Montfort University Leicester (DMU)’s Matthew Taylor.
Neither the Gunners nor the Villa had even been founded when the first final took place in 1872 as Wanderers took on Royal Engineers at Kennington Oval in London in front of a meagre 2000 spectators.
Compare that to this Saturday when 90,000 fans will decorate Wembley Stadium in their swarms of red or claret and blue, with millions of television viewers watching all over the world.
It’s not just the numbers of supporters that has changed in the last century and a half, some of the rules of the game are unrecognisable from the game we know and love today.
The teams would change end after each goal, throw-ins were awarded to the team to first retrieve the ball and in place of the crossbar was a tape stretched between two poles a whopping eight feet above the ground.
Kennington Oval, the home of Surrey County Cricket Club, went on to hold the majority of the next 20 FA Cup finals after the inaugural match while Wembley hosted its first FA Cup final in 1923.
Matthew Taylor, professor of History at DMU’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC), is often consulted for his academic excellence in sports history.
Matthew said: “For a long period of time, football wasn’t embedded into national culture in the way that it is today.
“The FA Cup has become England’s showpiece football event, and millions of people all over the world from Scandinavia to the Far East will be watching it.
“It has become part of the national sporting calendar in the same way that the boat race and Wimbledon have.”
When Wanderers and Royal Engineers contested the first final, Wanderers came out on top in a 1-0 win in what was their first of five wins in the competition. Only eight clubs have gone on to better this total, including both of this weekend’s finalists.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Matthew said: “"Football became increasingly popular over the next decade or so, as it became embedded in British working-class culture. Its popularity was helped by entrepreneurs who realised the opportunities that existed in enclosing playing fields and charging the public for entry.
"The next step from this, as teams began to act as representatives of their localities, was for ambitious club committees to 'poach' the best players and pay for them to play for their teams. Within less than a decade of the first FA Cup final, professional football had emerged in England.”
Matthew added: “I remember some of the classic FA Cup finals from the 1970s and 80s so hopefully this game will provide something similar.
“I’m just hoping for a match to remember but if I were a betting man then my money would be on Arsenal.”
Posted on Thursday 28 May 2015