We turned up, we saw, we bloody well conquered...

A day of moments lived to never be forgotten

Half an hour gone, a long clearance headed down, a second ball hoovered up in midfield by Murphy, then neatly turned out to Barnes on left. A surge, a pause, a surge again to the byline, and a deep cross to Isak. Header, block, ricochet to Trippier, drive, block, corner. A deep guttural roar unleashed around the black and white half of Wembley.

That was the moment for me. The moment I knew that this time was different.

Of course, it wasn’t a single moment. It was an accumulation of moments. The early slightly desperate hoof into touch by the opposition in red, their attempt to release Salah on the right that was overhit and ran straight out. Tripps’ calm header back to Pope. And then another. Corners, crosses, tackles. Man-marking so tight that they could have shared a pair of shorts.

And so the realisation slowly dawned that our Wembley opponents didn’t always have to be treated as omnipotent footballing gods. Here, they were mortal, ordinary; false idols with rapidly dissolving feet of clay. And more importantly, the lads in black and white had not gone missing. They had well and truly turned up. There was nothing to fear and everything to savour. This time really was different.

I don’t need to tell you what happened next. Sir Dan of Burn, every single sinew in his neck straining and bulging, somehow simultaneously powering and placing the header of all headers precisely into the corner beyond the despairing Kelleher. Different? We don’t do cup final goals at Wembley, do we? We do now. Totally fucking different.

From there, the day is a glorious kaleidoscope of impossible wonderful moments. Moments with people I know and moments with people I’ve never seen before and will never see again.

Moments at half-time. The lad I walked past and swapped words with whose eyes were already red from crying. The speechless knowing halftime exchange with a friend, each of us not daring to say what we both felt – we can win this, we should win this, maybe just maybe we bloody well will win this.

Moments in the second half. An offside goal that we don’t even notice because two minutes later we just go and score a better one. Complete disbelief, wonder, awe as strangers were hugged, heads shaken, arms lifted aloft. Every attack looking like it would create a goal. A whole ten minutes of taking the ball to the corner flag. Sandro untying his shoelace, just to make sure that he could spend thirty seconds tying it up again.

---

---

And then, the moment. No, really, THE MOMENT. The final whistle. You sometimes wonder whether something you want so much, something you’ve dreamt of, yearned for, something that has come to define so much of you, might just be an anti-climax when it finally comes. Not this. It was everything I imagined, and more.

A sheer, unadulterated, unfiltered outpouring of joy. Two fists pumped to the sky, jumping, bouncing, screaming, hugging.

The hugging. A word about the hugging.

I wasn’t standing with friends. Different pots, different blocks. But walking out at the end I heard my name roared to my side. Here was a face I knew. Someone who I know cares as deeply and all-consumingly as me. Someone who’s been through the same 40 years of pain. It was a release, a connection, a moment I’ll remember forever.

There were three more of those, as the three of us who’d started nine hours earlier over Guinness and a full English were reunited – at the back of block 134, at King’s Cross, outside the Scottish pub around the corner.

Football means different things to different people, and I can’t speak for what was in their minds at those moments. But I know that in that moment it felt important to find anyone and everyone I know and who I share this crazy, wonderful, agonising addiction with, to throw my arms around them, to squeeze them tight as if only then, in that transfer of emotion could the reality be confirmed.

Over the weekend there were other moments – random, funny, and individual that will form part of my mental tapestry forever. Everyone will have their own.

Punching Tim and his elegant wife next to us as we worked our way through the menu of dubbels and tripels at the Belgian beer place on Drury Lane. Poor drunken Soph hovering constantly on the cusp of vomit on the Tube to Finchley who was a reassuring throwback to when kids went out and got hammered on a Saturday night. The solitary poker faced Liverpool fan on the wildly raucous Geordie sardine Tube to Wembley, eyes dead ahead as mayhem unfolded all around him. Lazy Susan in Finchley Greggs for whom service was a thing to do very much at her own positively glacial pace.

And so after enough beer and whisky to float a generously sized flotilla, consumed in a succession of utterly random bars (primary criterion - they were open), we found ourselves in a quiet suburban London garden after 1am with a bottle of champagne and a cigar. So this is what it feels like.

There will be talk of springboards, of the future, of more to come. I honestly couldn’t give the slightest of fucks about any of that right now. If we never win another football match, I can live with that. There will never be a first again. Never will it taste so sweet. Never will the emotion be quite as pure, quite as strong.

It feels horribly self-indulgent to write any of this. But it also feels important. I was there. I could never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t been.

The moment of moments. Milk it, enjoy it. Don’t ever, ever forget it.

Matthew Philpotts