Cardiff City FA Cup Final Songs

The FA Cup Final song is one of my favourite FA Cup traditions, Chas and Dave's effort in 81 being a personal favourite of mine. Unfortunately it is something that has fallen by the wayside in recent years but thankfully followers of Cardiff City have thrown themselves into it.

BLUEBIRDS FLYING HIGH (5/10)
The official song, Bluebirds Flying High, is sung by ex-Fame Academy, Eurovision entrant James Fox. It's very middle of the road, innoffesive stuff. Describing the quality of Tony Capaldi's long throw and Enckelman's ability at saving "spot kicks". The most cringeworthy moment in the song comes near the beginning where Fox sings "at the helm is Peter Ridsdale". Singing about a football chairman is always wrong, but I suspect it was the best way for James Fox to convince the club (i.e. Peter Ridsdale) to endorse the song as the official song - it was Fox who approached Cardiff City with the song. The most interesting part of the video is City fullback Kevin McNaughton dressed in a Dangermouse suit, something I am yet to get to the bottom of.

DO THE AYATOLLAH (2/10)
A week or so later a few Cardiff City fans created a musical monstrosity in "Do the Ayatollah" - is a song based on the dance floor hit "Do the Macarena". (The ayatollah is wonderfully described on wikipedia as "Performing the Ayatollah is done by having both hands flat pointing towards each other raised above your head and repeatedly moving them up and down in a patting motion".) It is as bad as it sounds and it only gets worse when you watch the video. Being a huge fan of rather poor jokes I do like the 1927 (just before half past seven) gag at the start but it goes downhill after the Call to Prayer. Awful. Although, in fairness it is only meant to be a bit of fun and not taken too seriously. However, they have massacred a perfectly bad song!

CARDIFF CITY SUPERSTARS (9/10)
Sitting head and shoulders above "Bluebirds Flying High" and "Do the Ayatollah" is the excellent "Cardiff City Superstar" by Helen Love and a few members of the Super Furry Animals. A previous version of this song (written to the music of 70s kids TV show Banana Splits) was written a decade or so ago. I like this, the lyrics are far more fan-centric than the other two songs and include the excellent lines: "Alan Green and the BBC, we're the team you didn't want to see" and "Ninian Park will always be my home, not the IKEA stadium across the road".

It also has the marvellous line "Directors leave and players go.", something that James Fox would do well to remember after featuring Publicity Pete in his song.

FA Cup Final 2007 - The New Wembley

I was ‘lucky’ enough to get a couple of tickets for the
(Champions League 3rd place playoff) FA Cup Final on Saturday. I hadn’t been to Wembley before (not even the old one), so I thought I should make the effort to get down there.

The stadium is an impressive sight, it dominates the skyline of West London (the first time I saw the new Wembley was standing on a hill near the signing of the Magna Carta - that is outside the M25). The designers of the new stadium should be praised for keeping Wembley Way, the long walk up to the ground.

The arch gives Wembley a unique look amongst other very large grounds. Looking at the bottom of the arch to where it loops over the stadium from the ground it looks like part of a rollercoaster.

Inside the ground under the stands there are great pictures of great Wembley events, FA Cup finals, motorcycling, rugby league all ordered by date, my tickets were by the 1970s. It’s nicely done. I look forward to finding out what pictures they have from the 1920s.

Programmes inside the ground were £10, I decided against buying one, or any of the extortionately priced food. Pre-match entertainment included people hanging from hot air balloons, a Red arrow flypast (growing up on RAF bases around the UK and Europe I’m bored of these now) and a procession of players from previous FA Cup finals. I applauded Cliff Jones, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush and Big Nev. The United and Chelsea fans jovially booed any player with a tenuos (and not so tenuos) relationship against their own club.

Prince William made a short, pointless speech, Man United fans sang throughout it improving their standing with me immeasurably. Abide by Me and the anthem were sung by Lesley Garrett, Sarah Brightman and Russell Watson. Biasedly I felt it could have been done to a far higher standard by Katherine Jenkins, Charlotte Church and Bryn Terfel.

The match was dire as expected. I was struck by the amount of moaning that the players engaged in with the officials. At one point Rio Ferdinand ran up to the linesman to scream in his face (Rio wasn’t the only example of this, players from both sides were at it). It’s interesting that this sort of behaviour doesn’t really happen in the Championship and when it does it inevitably leads to a booking. This isn’t to say that the Championship is some shining example of the wonderousness of football being played in the Corinthian spirit, I just wouldn’t expect there to be such a marked difference as there was.

What was also interesting was in the space of two minutes Didier Drogba and Ronaldo both dived. Both instances were reacted to by derision from either end. I get the feeling that the only way to stop diving occuring in our game would be for both ends to react against both instances of diving.

Wembley still has the problem that a lot of new grounds have in that it has no real history. I had the same feeling when I went to the Millennium Stadium in that no games had yet been played there. When I go to the Millennium Stadium now I can remember a great Wales win over Italy and a Cardiff City playoff win as well as the other great moments from the ground (Gerrard’s long range thunderbolt and Wales winning the Six Nations). The New Wembley doesn’t yet have a history. It will soon come though as England begin playing matches there (maybe even in the finals of a World Cup or European Championships).

Personally I feel the 1980s were the glory days of the FA Cup, these were the years in which I grew up. The first FA Cup Final I remembered was the 1985 FA Cup when Norman Whiteside won the game for 10 man Manchester United in extra time. I can name all winners of the FA Cup in the 1980s, I struggle with the 90s and haven’t a clue about the last 5 years. I think it’s a great shame that we are unlikely to see an FA Cup final that doesn’t feature Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United or Chelsea in a long, long time. The days of clubs such as Ipswich Town,
Wimbledon or Coventry City winning the FA Cup are long gone and the chances of any of them making the final is a long shot now.

Wanderers. The first winners of the FA Cup in 1872. They beat Royal Engineers by a goal to nil to etch their name in footballing folklore.

The following picture comes from before the 1972 final at Wembley where there was a pageant. All the teams that had won the FA Cup up to that point were represented. Including Wanderers in their fetching hooped kit (I must say it looks rather too large for a lot of the 'players')

This weekend saw the league sides enter the FA Cup to play against potential bananaskins. The likes of Farsley Celtic, Northwich Victoria and Leatherhead battling to become 'giantkillers' and to become legends in their own small part of England.

As it happens only Basingstoke Town of Conference South managed to make an impact in this year's First Round. A Matt Warner goal in the 25th minute knocked out League One side Chesterfield. The Spireites are (of course) giantkillers themselves having knocked out West Ham United in this year's League Cup. I'm sure many 'Stoke' fans are theorising that they are now better than Arsenal.

West Ham United 1 Arsenal 0
Chesterfield 2 West Ham United 1
Chesterfield 0 Basingstoke Town 1

Well it follows doesn't it?

Basingstoke's reward? A possible derby match against Aldershot Town, if they can beat Chelmsford City.