The History of Football in 90 Minutes by Ben Jones

Author:Ben Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

74

Hughie Ferguson wins the FA Cup for Cardiff City (1927)

DESPITE BEING founded in 1871 (Minute 15), the FA Cup has only seen one club from outside of England win the trophy. In 1927, Cardiff City made history at Wembley as the Welsh team beat Arsenal 1-0 with Hughie Ferguson scoring the winner in the 74th minute. There is more to this story though, involving the birth of the cup final radio broadcast, a war veteran, a lucky cat and Arsenal’s Welshman who blamed his slippery shirt.

The 1920s was arguably Cardiff City’s greatest decade. Promoted to the First Division in 1921, they would come second in the league in 1924, narrowly missing out to Herbert Chapman’s Huddersfield Town on goal average. Meanwhile, their cup form was also impressive, and two quarter-finals and a semi-final was added to by a 1925 Wembley appearance to face Sheffield United in the final. United were successful, a 1-0 win denying Cardiff’s proudest day.

On 23 April 1927, the Bluebirds earned another attempt to lift a maiden FA Cup crown as they faced a well-fancied Arsenal outfit. Cardiff would this time be victorious as Ferguson’s shot inexplicably found the back of the net. The forward’s attempt should’ve been ‘comfortably’ saved by Welsh international goalkeeper Dan Lewis, but it instead slipped through his arms, below his chest and rolled towards the line.322 Lewis’s last-ditch scramble was in vain as his elbow knocked it over the line and the game was Cardiff’s.

Cardiff’s ‘chain-smoking’, ‘hard-tackling’ captain Fred Keenor would lift the cup,323 a moment immortalised by a statue outside the Bluebirds’ current home, Cardiff City Stadium. The First World War veteran had fought at the brutal Battle of the Somme and was a local fan favourite, seen as ‘an old-fashioned working man’ who was ‘committed to the community’,324 so it was right he would raise the trophy.

On the losing side, the inquest would begin and end with Lewis. Some speculated he had ‘thrown’ the fixture, but the disgust with himself was clear; he had reportedly flung his loser’s medal into the crowd after receiving it from King George V. Lewis blamed the ‘sheen’ on his new jersey for allowing the ball to slip from his grip, and this started an Arsenal tradition of never letting a goalkeeper play in a final with a new kit.325 Slippery shirt or not, in south Wales they would ‘proudly treasure’ winning ‘the greatest event in the soccer world’.326

Perhaps it was meant to be that in 1927, media-savvy Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman was involved in the first live radio broadcast of an FA Cup Final. He saw football as a ‘media event’ and agreed with BBC director-general Lord Reith about the importance of broadcasting matches of national significance. The hymn ‘Abide with Me’ would be sung for the first time at Wembley to further promote the ‘Christian’ values of the day, a tradition that remains in cup finals today. The radio transmission was a hit, and the number of UK radio licences rose from two million in 1926, to eight million by 1939.

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