Blog: Next Stop Wembley

But it is real, it is happening and in just a few short days' time too.

We're actually in that moment when Johnstone's Paint Trophy Final: Walsall v Bristol City starts appearing in the papers and online as a forthcoming fixture, where TV are advertising it in their upcoming schedule and you can actually set your digital box thingy to record it.

There will be as much publicity as the club has probably ever had; why even as we speak there will be representatives of the West Midlands media going 'Walsall? At Wembley? Didn't know they were local?' (only joshing).

With a fast approaching 30,000 fans descending on the capital, people will obviously questions as to how a club with regular sub-4000 gates can achieve this but that's for another time. Next Sunday is for us, it's our day.

It is for my dad's generation, those who watched the club finishing bottom of the old Division Three South season after season in the 1950s.

It is for those of us who remember the gloriously majesty and savage beauty of dilapidated Fellows Park. Great cup nights, wonderful football, Alan Buckley.

It is for those who campaigned against Ken Wheldon's unthinkable plans to relocate the club out of the borough (twice).

It is for those who endured the Barnwell era and the subsequent misery of the early 90s.

(I wasn't one of those who travelled to Hartlepool on a Tuesday night in January 1991 and paid to get in, only for the match to be called off at 7.30 with a pitch that could've been airlifted in from an Antarctic Weather Station, but I know people who were. Wembley is for you.)

It is also for those of us who were at Gillingham in '92, the point where it all bottomed out and we were never as bad again. Floodlight pylons and Hide n' Seek – you had to be there.

It is for everyone who went to the same venue five years later on a Tuesday night in the fog and got there just as the floodlights were being turned off. (I was on that minibus.)

It is for those of us who enjoyed the 90s return of a team worth supporting under Chris Nicholl, the madness of Big Fat Jan and the magnificent splendour of Sir Ray Graydon's teams.

It is for everyone who endured the Lee era and the subsequent Merson/Broadhurst car crash years.

It is for everyone who put up with the miserable nothingness of the immediate post Dicky Dosh years.

It is for everyone involved in the Ginger Mourinho revival of the last four years.

(Except you Grigg).

(And you McCarey).

It is for everyone who remembers all the great fanzines, the Saddlers Action Supporters meetings at the Delves and the good work of ISSA in the late 90s and Unity more recently. For everyone who built up the Saddlers Club and those who work tirelessly for the Trust.

It is for heroes like Graeme Brooks, walking all the way to Wembley (@Walsall2Wembley) for the Walsall Society for the Blind in memory of his grandfather. Go for it mate.

Anyone who saw the legends Gilbert Alsop, Tony Richards and Colin Taylor and so many more , it is for you.

Having recently lost Albert McPherson, Geoff Morris and Dave Mackay, it is for all of the Saddlers Family who are no longer with us, they will be there in spirit. And it is for those taken from us way too soon – Ian Handysides, David Preece, Matt Gadsby, Anton Reid – they will be there in our hearts.

For all the young fans, the part-timers, those who'd given up and those who'd stuck with the club. It is our day and we're going to make the most of it.

Next stop Wembley.

COME ON YOU SADDLERS!