Crystal Palace have won the FA Cup! Obviously, it’s a welcome relief that football’s money bags haven’t snaffled up all the trophies again this year. Let’s not fool ourselves here though, the Palace squad has a value of £370m and though they ran a £7.2m transfer surplus this season they ran a total deficit of £163m in the 3 seasons before. Anyway, it is genuinely great (except for Brighton fans) that a smaller club has won the oldest cup competition in the world^TM.

Away from the money, there were a few fanzines related to FA cup stories, so we’ll talk a little about them here.

Gary Mabbutt’s Knee

First up is a stop at Coventry, edited by Neville Hadsley, who in a 2001 Guardian article claimed quite a few incredible achievements for the club “We won the FA Cup in 1987, which makes us the only midlands club to do so in the last 30 years. We’re unbeaten in Wembley finals. And at home in Europe. We’re the only team to spend more than 30 years in the top flight without winning the championship. We’re the only club in the world whose fans sing a song with lyrics written by Jimmy Hill.”

If you didn’t already realise, the fanzine was named after the diverted winner in that 1987 cup final.

Years later Gary Mabbutt said the following about the game “It was obviously very disappointing being the first cup final Tottenham had ever lost but I’m an absolute legend in the Midlands. I’ve got free food and drink for life. Everywhere I go I’ve got Coventry fans coming up wanting pictures with me of them kissing my left knee”

It’s Spartans Vs Arsenal If?

A reference to the fact that the non-league heroes would have been at home to Arsenal in the quarter finals of the 1977-78 FA Cup if they could beat Wrexham…the full story of the cup run is told in this excellent blog https://blythspirit.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/the-1977-78-fa-cup-run-the-complete-record/

Written by the former editor of Blyth Spirit fanzine (9 issues from Sept 99 to Sept 01 always advert free) and returned as the Blyth Spirit blog, accompanying facebook page and Twitter account (@BlythSpirit66)

There was also a great summary in WSC 218 summary and a great set of highlights from Match of the Day are here. https://www.wsc.co.uk/stories/from-the-archive-when-a-wobbly-corner-flag-ended-blyth-spartans-fa-cup-run/

Apparently, Barry Davies played 5 a side in the car park with fans and my favourite bit of the commentary is Davies reporting that before the game a man told him that he’d put 50p on Blyth to win the cup that year at 200,000 to 1. It’s the hope that kills you.

Hyde Hyde! What’s the Score

A slightly tongue in cheek Preston fanzine celebrating the club’s record 26-0 win vs Hyde in the 1887 FA Cup. I can find little about this fanzine except that it did exist, but in any case, the story of the tie is interesting and not just because it’s still the record score for an FA Cup tie.

It was reported at the time that the reason Preston went to town so badly on their Lancs neighbours was that they’d tried to buy Hyde off from the tie, but Hyde refused. This  led to Preston vowing to break the English record score and fielding an almost full strength side vs a team of rank amateurs.

Perhaps North End were more concerned at being drawn away to Padiham in the 2^nd round of the Lancs association cup but yes, you heard that right, as reported in the Empire News on the 16^th Preston tried to “bring off” the tie. Not sure if Preston were one of the 70 club’s who’d lost all interest, but the paper had no interest in the tie and despite the score they didn’t bother to run a match report for the game! Luckily, they did report on such ties as Notts Rangers vs Jardine, Chirk (Holders of the Welsh cup!) vs Chester St Oswalds and Belper vs Sheffield Wednesday, a match Wednesday won due to a strong wind.

Like many PL sides today, amateur side Hyde certainly lost interest in the FA cup as they didn’t enter the competition again until 1906. As a Chesterfield fan I’m used to losing all interest in the cup by December except that time… https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/04/30/bring-me-the-head-of-david-elleray/

Tired and Weary

Tired and Weary at Birmingham was named after the official club song of Birmingham City F.C., a song adopted during the club’s run to the 1955–56 FA Cup final. Apparently on the way to Highbury for a quarter-final tie at Arsenal the players were having a sing song and when Scottish winger Alex Govan was asked for his choice he started singing “Keep Right On”. It’s a strange choice, as it’s a sad song in honour of Harry Lauder’s son who had been killed fighting in the First World War and was originally called The End Of The Road” its hardly “Eye of the Tiger” but anyway, the other players liked it and were still singing it when they arrived with the coach now surrounded by Birmingham fans who took the song up as their own.

Lauder’s recording was soon played before home games at St Andrews with song sheets available for spectators. The song with slightly altered lyrics has been a constant at the club’s matches ever since, and got to no. 157 in the UK singles charts, and no. 23 in the Independent Singles Charts the week before Birmingham won the Football League Cup in 2011.

Final Whistle

So there you have it, just some of the stories behind football fanzine names, all linked to the FA Cup in some way. More importantly encompassing many of the ways football fanzines were created; Laughing at the misfortune of others, heroic episodes from the past, witty sarcasm or just music, a song and what it came to mean week in week out for a team, a club and its supporters.

We’ll come back to all of these themes in later blogs.