Walsall blog: Wembley must come

We've all sang the song, we've all dared to dream and we've all suffered the tremendous disappointment … the famous Walsall F.C. have never actually been to Wem-ber-lee, writes Walsall blogger Mark Jones.

There is still a slight chance that it could happen this season and last weekend's F.A. Cup semis got me thinking about a trip to North London once more.

The Saddlers are one of about ten current league teams never to have played at Wembley and, by my reckoning, we are the highest ranked of the lot.

I'm also fairly certain that we have had more near misses than anyone else still waiting for that first walk down Wembley Way.

Admittedly it took the (then) best team in Europe to stop us in 1984 and then only in the second leg after that memorable and magical night at Anfield. (This of course was an era when the Scousers still actually bothered to turn up for domestic competitions).

Quickly passing over the '93 Play-Offs, which were made all the worse because I'd allowed my usual Saddlers-induced cynicism to drop for a time and actually thought we were going to make it, there was then the double nightmare of Bournemouth '98 and Millwall '99 in the AutoWindscreen.

In both of those ties there were moments when a slice of luck here or the right bounce of the ball there and the Walsall boys could have made it.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that we've twice managed to win Divisional Play-Offs, turning over Bristol City at Fellows Park two years before the final was moved to Wembley; and then beating Reading in 2001, the season it had closed down.

Not that I would have swapped the day at the Millennium for anything however.

Just getting there in the first place was a unique feeling in itself; then there was the build up, the journey down there, watching the team bus arrive, seeing the players lining up to be introduced (even though it was to that old Tory idiot Mawhinney) and, of course, a stunning two-goals-in-a-minute extra time victory.

(To me the sweet F.A. could solve a lot of problems by playing the semi-finals in Cardiff again and leaving Wembley to host the cup final – providing we don't get there next season of course!)

My own personal experience of Wembley was at the old stadium, England beating Scotland (always pleasing) in the mid-eighties and a few Schoolboy Internationals.

Facilities wise it wasn't the best but I always loved spotting the old twin towers on the approach to the stadium.

The Wembley goal nets always seemed to be deeper than at other grounds which seemed to attach an even greater importance to a Wembley goal.

You could sit in the ground, close your eyes and imagine Stanley Matthews running down the wing, Geoff Hurst's shot that clearly crossed the line or that bloke on the pitch who thought it was all over in 1966.

Our day out at the National Stadium is long overdue.

I firmly believe that at some point in the future our day will come and the Mighty Saddlers will definitely take their rightful place on the hallowed turf under the new arc …

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