10 years on... did Pompey really win the FA Cup? It would appear so... Wednesday, 16th May 2018 22:21 by Steve Bone May 17, 2008, is unique to me, and probably to many. I've been watching Pompey for 37 seasons and everything I've seen - all the highs and lows - I can organise into a neat timeline that, while it may veer wildly upwards and then downwards, makes sense. One match or season leads to another. It all fits. Apart from that one day. For me, there's watching Pompey, whichever division they happen to be in, and there's the FA Cup final - an occasion I grew up loving and still love now. It was not an occasion I ever dreamed Pompey would be part of, and even now, part of me can't quite come to terms with the fact that, not only were we part of it, we went and won the bloody thing! A friend at work did me a DVD copy of the full BBC TV coverage of the day - all the build-up, the full match and the cup presentation and interviews. He gave it to me a few days after the final itself, yet I have never watched it, and I'm not sure I ever will. I have my memories of that magical yet exhausting day - they are fairly sketchy in places - and I don't think I'll ever lose those memories, but nor do I think I want to add to them. I certainly don't need to watch the match again to know it was no classic. That it wasn't matters not. The match was the means to an end... 90 minutes in which Pompey won the FA Cup. I'll never tire of saying that. My most vivid memory is standing on my seat pretty much as soon as the final whistle sounded, and staying there until after the last player and official had left the pitch, which must have been an hour later. I think I stayed on my seat for a while after that too, until there were very few people left in the stadium. I may even have had to be nudged on my way by a steward - I can't be sure. I just didn't want the experience to end. Like many, I'd swap it for nothing. I'm not having any of this notion that winnning the Cup caused the turmoil the club went through between 2009 and 2013, nor the nonsense spewed by bitter fans of inferior clubs who assert that we somehow bought the Cup. We didn't. I don't care what came after. The fact is I, in my lifetime, have my seen MY team win THE cup. What percentage of football fans can say that? To mark the 10-year anniversary of that greatest day, I went to dig out the piece I wrote about it. Only upon failing to find said article did I remember ... I didn't write about it. I was too drained to get more than a sentence down on the keyboard when I got home. Instead, I waited 24 hours and put my thoughts into words after getting home from the following day's victory parade in Southsea. The piece I wrote then is below - some of it is now laughable, but at the time it was from the heart. It was a bit of a stream of consciousness after a weekend that meant so much. So don't judge me for having predicted that the Blues were on their way to becoming one of England's top six or eight clubs, or for some of my other 2008 assertions. You probably agreed with them at time. To quote Ernie Wise, here is the piece what I wrote... THEY'RE saying it can't get any better than this for Pompey. But they were saying that straight after the Cup final - and arguably it already has. Just when you thought lifting the trophy would be enough for most, the Blues went and attracted a staggering (estimated) 200,000 people to the victory parade. That's three times the number who turned out five years and a week ago to celebrate the first-division championship win. Maybe it's just the immediate euphoria of the club's first FA Cup final win since 1939 - or maybe it's a sign that winning this famous trophy will attract a whole new generation of fans. Certainly Sacha Gaydamak, as he looked down from the top deck of the bus carrying the Pompey heroes and the Cup itself, must have felt more comfortable than ever before about building a stadium which will house up to 36,000. It's been a strange season for Pompey - they've been in the top half of the table since September and have been on a victorious FA Cup run, yet they've still not been able to regularly attract a full house to a 20,500-capacity stadium. That's had some wondering just how big a club Pompey are - and how big a club Pompey can be. Even taking into consideration that new grounds generally attract new fans, and sometimes, as up the road, in their thousands, the fact Pompey couldn't fill Fratton week in week out - even one week before the Cup semi-final - raised questions about their potential. Surely, this weekend has put to bed those worries. Pompey and their fans have shown, first in the final itself and second in the following day's wonderful celebrations, they are a special club - and a very, very well-backed one. Being Cup holders will have Pompey in demand. Already they've signed up for a tour of Nigeria alongside Manchester United, who they will then come back and play in the Community Shield six days before their sixth season in the Premier begins. Now fans can await with great interest the draw for the early stages of the UEFA Cup. That, too, gives an extra dimension to following the Blues. And by the time pre-season comes around, Harry Redknapp ought to have strengthened his squad significantly - probably with half a dozen players including at least three who he will see as key, regular first-choicers for the new campaign. If you can attract James, Johnson, Campbell, Distin, Diarra, Kranjcar, Defoe and the rest to a club with a 20,000-capacity dilapidated ground and rented training facilities, who on earth will you be able to attract to a club with the fairly-concrete promise of a new stadium and purpose-built training ground who are playing in Europe? The mind boggles. What's nice about what Pompey have achieved this weekend is that they seem, in general, to have done it with a nod of approval from the football world in general, not just their own followers. Many of the more experienced and even cynical football writers on the nationals enjoyed the final for what it was: 'a throwback final', one called it, the people's final, many others offered. Neutrals enjoyed seeing a final between two teams for whom winning the Cup was everything, not just another trophy out of four they'd been in with a chance of weeks earlier. Pompey's fans certainly did themselves justice, as, we should point out, did Cardiff's. Wembley was trouble-free and the noise was immense. Those of us who were in the middle of the eastern end of the stadium and couldn't tell what the atmosphere was like elsewhere and on TV will have had confirmation from those at home: the Chimes rang out loud and proud. It has been a weekend with so many special moments. On Saturday, Harry leading out the team, Kanu hooking in the goal, the final whistle, Sol's unquestionable elation when he lifted the Cup (he surely won't want to disappear off somewhere and miss another crack at Europe, will he?), Linvoy getting his hands on the trophy, the now not-so-low profile Sacha coming down from the directors' box to join the party. On Sunday, it was the whole feel of the day. It meant as much to the young as it did to the old - it meant almost as much to the city and wider area as a whole as it did to the people in that city and wider area who are active Pompey fans. It was impossible not to feel a tingle down the spine when you saw those aerial pictures of the bus crawling through the crowds. But it has also been a weekend which leaves a legacy - one which gives Pompey the greatest chance they'll probably ever have to go on and establish themselves as one of the top six or eight clubs in the country for years to come. There are people no longer involved at Pompey who shouldn't be forgotten, because without their part in the build-up to the success story of 2007-08, it wouldn't have happened. They range from Alan Ball and Milan Mandaric to the fans at Crewe back on February 14, 1998, who started the singing that eventually led to that year's Great Escape. They include many, many players - from Aaron Flahavan, who served Pompey so well during difficult years before losing his life aged 25, to people like Gary O'Neil, Matt Taylor and Benjani, who might so easily still have been around to be part of May 17 and 18, 2008. But above all, there are two people who made this weekend of all weekends possible - Harry Redknapp and Sacha Gaydamak. One's football knowledge, nous and man-management skills, the other's investment, and the pair's combined passion for football and in particular for Pompey, has given us something we couldn't have dared dream about a few short years ago. It doesn't get any better than this? Who says?
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