Fan column: Importance of the FA Cup diminished by many but a big opportunity for Wolves

For Sir Jack, the pinnacle of achievement; how times have changed. 

Given that Liverpool’s reign as champions is coming to an end, their level of intensity on Friday will be high, but this competition would not have topped their priority list pre-season.  

As an impressionable kid, the FA Cup was supercharged with excitement; often attendances would attract numbers far in excess of league matches. There was undeniably a romantic element. 

The ‘Matthews Final’ of 1953, the most talked about game played in England bar the 1966 World Cup Final. Non-league giantkillers thrust into the spotlight mixing with the best clubs in the game. 

Journeymen like Ronnie Radford immortalised way beyond the boundaries of Hereford for his remarkable goal to eliminate Newcastle United a club synonymous with Wembley success in the 1950’s. 

Third Division South minnows Bournemouth eliminated Wolves at Molineux when the South Bank goal-frame was dismantled by matchwinner Reg Cutler holding up play as the groundsman carried out running repairs. 

Decades later, following Wolves at Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium, I popped into their club shop and pride of place was a piece of ironwork purporting to be the authentic goal-frame from that day in 1957. Unlikely that piece of casting ever saw the factories of Wolverhampton, but the artefact proved the longevity of cup memories and the importance of the competition to established supporters. 

The humiliation we suffered against Chorley, still remembered as one of our darkest days. 

I felt a painful empathy with goalkeeper John Ruddy when he stated that he loved watching playbacks of any game he had participated in, bar one. The semi-final defeat at Wembley in 2019. 

He had never watched this game and said he never would; me too, simply couldn’t face it. 

Contrast this desolation with the euphoria of winning the League Cup at Wembley in 1974 and 1980. The sharpest of differing emotions, the magic of the cup. 

Voluntarily devalued by many clubs these days, being eliminated in the early rounds viewed as of little consequence. 

The sepia images of Billy Wright and Bill Slater lifting the FA Cup for Wolves midway through the last century progressively become more dated but no less important; contemporary football moneymen might have little regard for the history of the game but even now, real supporters are more discerning.