COME ON CHELSEA

By Since66
May 5 2012

Once upon a time the FA Cup Final was the last game of the football season. A game that brought the curtain down, in the same way that the Community Shield heralds the start of a new season. Nowadays, the FA in their quest to pay-off the building of the ‘New’ Wembley as quickly as possible are dictated to by the TV companies to ‘maximise’ revenue and to ‘maximise’ audience figures.

The FA Cup used to be the only game on a Saturday with the traditional 3pm kick-off, minutes after ‘Abide With Me’ had been sung.

Today’s final, to me anyway, has been slung on the back burner and the fixture has been lost in the myriad of the closing League One and League Two fixtures and Arsenal, beginning the day playing at home to Norwich.

Why couldn’t the Football League move their fixtures to a Sunday just like the forces of the Premier League have and let the FA Cup Final have its day basking in all its glory in keeping with its tradition as ‘The Greatest Domestic Cup Competition’ in the world?

There used to be a time when the build-up to the FA Cup Final lasted a week.

All you heard was the FA Cup Final this, the FA Cup Final that, but this week there has hardly been an audible whimper.

From the moment the League programme finished to the blowing of the first whistle as the final kicked-off, the press and media fell over backwards amongst themselves vying for the best coverage, the hottest exclusives, right down to following both teams being measured and fitted up for their Cup Final suits.

This build-up week, we have had the Manchester derby which turned out to be a damp squid (unless you are a Citeh fan), both teams losing their latest league games, Roy Hodgson’s appointment as England’s manager and the FA announcing to the World that the 5.15pm kick-off was set to ‘maximise’ TV audiences between ITV and ESPN.

Gone are the days where ITV and the BBC used to battle it out for ratings. Both went head-to-head with a noon start, all the way through to kick-off, the presentations, the post-match interviews before concluding their coverage some six hours later.

Today ITV are commencing their coverage two hours before kick-off whereas ESPN begin theirs at Noon.

It really doesn’t feel like FA Cup Final day and the fault belongs entirely to the FA who have stripped the traditions of the competition slowly and surely over the years, tarnishing and damaging their competition purely to ‘maximise’ profits and to ‘maximise’ TV audiences.

There hasn’t too many FA Cup battles between the two sides in recent seasons. The last time the two sides came up against each other in the FA Cup was the semi-final at Old Trafford in 2006 when Liverpool won 2-1.

Prior to that semi-final, the most famous FA Cup-tie was in 1997 when Chelsea came back from 2-0 down at The Bridge to win the game 4-2 and then went on to win the trophy beating Middlesbrough in the final with Bobby Di scoring what was the fastest FA Cup Final goal in history.

COME ON CHELSEA, LETS MAKE IT A BLUE DAY

TWITTER: @WVOMChelsea

2012 FA Cup Final: Tradition is Dead!

Discussion started by 50 Years Over 100 Years , 05/05/2012 10:00

50 Years Over 100 Years
05/05/2012 10:00

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dixon9
05/05/2012 10:25

Nice piece.

I was discussing this very subject with my brother and a couple of mates at the pub last night. I can remember as a kid, waking up a bit nervous in the morning (even though Chelsea werent playing a part) and being glued to the tele, watching one of the teams eating their cornflakes before getting on the coach...! I doubt younguns of today or in the future will ever feel the same.

For some reason I'm not optimistic about today (but that is probably a good sign).



"It is born out of hypocrisy and fundamental insecurity. There have been two kids on the block for the past 12 years. Suddenly, there is a third and that one is threatening to be more successful than the others and they don’t like it." P Kenyon.

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