At 4.45pm on April 3rd 1976 the lives of Saints supporters changed for ever and now they had four weeks till the biggest day of their Saints supporting lives.

Two things happened on Saturday 3rd April 1976 of note, Brotherhood Of Man won the Eurovision song contest with the truly awful Save All Your Kisses for me, the first event though was Saints getting to the FA Cup Final meaning that in Southampton at least the Eurovision song contest passed up by as we celebrated like nothing else mattered.

Certainly we had to get back to reality fast, we had to go to Fratton Park on the Tuesday night, three players had celebrated a little too much and therefore Jim McCalliog, Peter Osgood and Jim Steele were dropped for the trip to Pompey, Steve Williams would make his debut and Pat Earles would replace Osgood in the number 9 shirt, not that the Fratton End noticed as they chanted abuse at Osgood every time the ball went to the number 9 shirt with Earles in it.

The game was nondescript settled with an 89th minute goal from Mick Channon which meant that Pompey would be relegated to the third division, what a three days to be a Saints fan.

Saints still had an outside chance of promotion and the Cup Final did not distract from the League, we won 5 out of our 7 games left, unfortunately even winning the two lost would not have got us up, in hindsight we would have probably lost out on goal difference newly introduced for this season.

Suddenly the eyes of the footballing world were on Southampton though, street sellers appeared in the precinct selling dodgy cup final merchandise and the club itself went into overdrive.

Various events were arranged around the City were arranged and everyone wanted to get in on the act with shops and businesses all putting up Saints colours and posters and literally every house in the City had something in its windows to display their loyalty to the cause.

I remember Bristol Street Motors on Shirley High Street put up a big marquee on its forecourt and had Dickie Davis from World Of Sport host a Cup Final themed evening.

Then came the selling of the cup tickets, the first tranche would go to Season ticket holders, back then only the upper West & East stands had season tickets and they soon snapped up the first 6,000 or so of the 25,000 allocation.

Next came voucher holders, each season vouchers would be handed out at an unpublicised game expected to be a low attendance, these would give priority for tickets, those 9,000 or so on the terraces that day of the 14,294 attendance did not realise just how valuable these vouchers would be.

As a voucher holder I knew I was guaranteed a ticket, however on the Sunday they went on sale there was still a massive queue and I started out by the turnstiles for the East Stand in Milton Road in a four deep line round into the car park to the ticket office.

When the voucher holders had their share it was more difficult to decide who had next shout, therefore the club said to qualify for the remaining tickets applicants needed to produce the stub from the semi final, only problem with this was that there were 25,000 of these in circulation, some fans had gone to the semi, others begged and bribed those who had their final ticket already through the voucher system to give them their semi ticket.

The tickets went on sale on Sunday 25th April, so when Saints played Hull City the previous day, the biggest queue was not to get in for this game(18,272 attendance) but to queue for around 20 hours till the tickets for the cup final went on sale.

A few days before the Final and Saints were leaving for their pre cup final hotel at Frinton On Sea, the same one they had used for the semi I went down to the Dell and saw the coach off getting all the autographs of the team and manager with the only exception being Mel Blyth who lived in Surrey and was meeting the team up o the motorway.

A crowd of Saints fans off school waved the coach off and the day was starting to become a reality and not just a dream.

The Echo was a flurry of Saints related topics, indeed back then it was the only way to get Saints news apart from matchday programmes and we eagerly found out that Saints would be wearing their change kit of yellow and blue and it would be a new kit supplier in Admiral who would make it.

Pictures came through of Saints in their new red & white training gear, but the actual Cup Final kit was being kept under wraps meaning that no one would actually see it till the team walked out at Wembley.

Finally the eve of the game came, there was no school because it was still the last week of the Easter holidays, football was played on the park (Green Park in Millbrook in our case) and everyone wanted to be Mick Channon or Peter Osgood, barely a goal was scored without the words " Channon scores the winner for Saints" Little did we all realise that the hero would be someone far less glamorous.

I Like many of my age group went to bed dreaming of what would be the next day, I dare say many in the pubs sunk a few beers and sang a few songs and had early nights as well, ready for the trip to Wembley, a journey never made by Saints fans before.

Photo: Action Images

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