West Ham are at Wembley again. I’m a twenty-year-old post-punk doing an English degree at the University of Lancaster. Being 300-odd miles from Upton Park, I’ve not been able to join the queues at the ground for FA Cup final tickets. But with the optimism of youth, I withdraw the final £40 left of my student grant and decide to travel back to Essex and go to Wembley, hoping to buy a ticket from a tout. My final exams start in three days’ time, but even so, I have to be there. Plenty of revision has been done, 40 per cent of my degree is coursework and if I don’t know my subjects by now, I never will. So, on Friday night it’s a train from Lancaster back to my parents’ house.

On the day of the final, I travel up to Wembley by tube with the two Steves from Brentwood, who do have tickets. Wembley Way is full of klaxons going off, crates of beer and fans in white, claret and blue scarves. Outside the turnstile I start asking if anyone has a spare ticket. Miraculously, a fan with a small boy suggests that if he can sneak his son under the turnstile, I can have his ticket for a fiver. This is a bargain, as the face value is only £3.50. This piece of East End gamesmanship works splendidly, and I’m soon through the turnstile and inside the stadium, thanking my saviour profusely. Everyone is singing and drinking bottles of beer in the concourse. Then it’s up the steps towards the sunlight and the luminous green grass before taking my place on the terraces.

I’m wearing my black Harrington jacket, blue Levi’s jeans, a replica West Ham Admiral shirt and a white scarf with claret and blue trimming. My programme costs 80p and features adverts for Skol, Player’s No. 6, Littlewoods Pools and Kevin Keegan’s new column in the Sunday Mirror. Wembley is moving into merchandising, and a programme advert offers Wembley-branded keyrings, wristbands, sweaters, executive jotters and programme binders. The hoardings around the pitch advertise Rizla, Talbot, Hotpoint, Mornflake Oats, DAF Trucks, National Girobank, Pye Radio, Bush Colour TV, Hitachi, Philips and Sharp. The only cameras are with the men in orange ‘press’ bibs crouched behind the goals. If you want to use a phone, you will have to leave the stadium and walk around the streets of Wembley looking for a red phone box.

Any West Ham fans reading the Daily Express that morning will have been incensed by the comments of Brian Clough. The iconoclastic Nottingham Forest manager has written:

That’s just about completed John Lyall’s team talk for him.

These are heady times. The Cockney Rejects are soon to release a wonderfully belligerent version of ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. The number one single is ‘Geno’ by Dexys Midnight Runners. The dad of my school friends Alison and Roz has bought something called a video recorder and is going to record the match. Tom Baker is still the Doctor in Doctor Who. Nelson Mandela is in a South African prison. Margaret Thatcher is the British Prime Minister but will surely only last one term. Jim Callaghan is still the leader of the Labour Party but looks set to be replaced by either Michael Foot or Denis Healey. The album charts contain works by Boney M, Rose Royce, Suzi Quatro, Genesis, Status Quo, The Undertones and Black Sabbath.

‘Trevor Brooking Sells More Dummies than Mothercare,’ reads one of the many banners around me. Ugly wire fences at the front of the terrace ensure there won’t be any pitch invasions as there were at the 1975 cup final. Other home-made banners read ‘Hitchcock’s Dead but Psycho Plays On’, ‘Get your camera off our banner’, and the lyrical ballad ‘The Greatest Players in the Land are Captain Billy and his Band. That’s Frank the Lamp, Alan Dev, Paul and Stewart and Tricky Trev.’ Alan Devonshire of West Ham and Pat Rice of Arsenal have also been the source of much punning. The banners include ‘Devonshire is the cream, Rice is the pudding’, ‘Billy Bonds eats Rice’ and ‘Devonshire is a Delight’.

The West Ham players inspect the pitch wearing brown suits, accompanied by huge cheers. It’s a big day for Paul Allen who is set to become the youngest player ever to appear in an FA Cup final at the age of seventeen years and 256 days. The BBC’s Bob Wilson interviews the players before the match, though as he talks to Arsenal’s Liam Brady a chorus of ‘Who the f**king hell are you?’ breaks out from the West Ham fans.

There’s a brass band, the Combined Bands of the Guards Division, as pre-match entertainment. Then ‘Abide with Me’ is played, which is always an emotional moment. John Lyall leads his men out in a brown lounge jacket and black trousers. The West Ham players are clad in claret and blue tracksuit tops over their kit. The Duchess of Kent is wearing a purple twinset and hat as she goes to shake hands with the teams. The West Ham and Arsenal fans sing ‘Bubbles’ and ‘There’s only one Liam Brady!’ respectively.

The game kicks off with West Ham in their white Admiral away kit and Arsenal in yellow. ‘We all follow the West Ham over land and sea! We all follow the West Ham on to victory!’ echoes around Wembley.

Terry Neill’s Arsenal seem puzzled by West Ham’s change of formation. John Lyall, who is chain-smoking on the bench, has pulled off a clever tactical coup, playing Stuart Pearson wide on the left and leaving David Cross as a lone striker. Cross works tremendously hard to occupy O’Leary and Young and this confuses the Arsenal defence, while an extra man in midfield helps negate the influence of Arsenal’s playmaker, Liam Brady.

Early on, a good run and cross from Stuart Pearson allows Geoff Pike to get in a shot that is saved by Pat Jennings. The crucial moment arrives after thirteen minutes. Alan Devonshire takes on Pat Rice and beats the Arsenal man for speed, sending over a cross that Jennings can only parry. David Cross shoots against a defender, then Pearson miscues, hitting the ball across goal. And there is Trevor Brooking stooping to divert a header past Jennings. The West Ham end erupts, though we’re not quite sure who scored since it was at the other end of the stadium.

‘We’re on the march with Lyall’s army! We’re all going to Wem-ber-ley! And we’ll really shake ’em up when we win the FA Cup! ’Cos West Ham is the greatest football team!’ sing the Hammers fans. The Arsenal fans respond with, ‘You only sing when you’re winning!’

Bizarrely, West Ham had finished seventh in the Second Division but are giving a jaded Arsenal quite a game. Can this be the same West Ham side that recently lost at home to Shrewsbury? Alvin Martin and Billy Bonds are massive at the back for West Ham. Pike works as hard as ever, the young Allen is doing well in midfield and Frank Lampard is showing all his experience at left-back, having been preferred over the matchday substitute Paul Brush.

In the second half, Arsenal do create a couple of good chances, but Phil Parkes, the Hammers keeper who seems all hair and moustache, saves smartly from Graham Rix and Brian Talbot. The West Ham fans amuse themselves with a not-very-friendly chorus of ‘He’s only a poor little Gunner / His face is all tattered and torn / He made me feel sick / So I hit him with a brick / And now he don’t sing anymore!’

Brooking does a lot of hard tackling and tracking back. In the final minute, he manages to release seventeen-year-old Allen. Allen’s through on goal but is crudely hacked down by Young with a cynical professional foul. The referee is only allowed to give a yellow card, as the FA has yet to update its rules on such offences, even though it’s a goalscoring opportunity. On the BBC commentary John Motson says, ‘Oh what a pity! A cynical foul and fully deserving of the yellow card it got.’ Ray Stewart hits the Arsenal wall with the free kick and Young gets away with his professional foul.

The West Ham fans are starting to think it could happen and have started singing ‘Bubbles’, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’. Brady makes a great run from deep but is tackled on the edge of the area by Brooking, who is making Clough look pretty stupid with his tracking back.

The West Ham fans are whistling for full time. There’s another chorus of ‘Bubbles’. Rix puts one last ball into the Hammers’ box and finally the whistle blows. Cross collapses onto the turf, head in hands. Lyall embraces Bonds, Brooking and Lampard. People are hugging me on the terraces.

Soon, Billy Bonds is leading his men up to the royal box. As he receives his medal,...