Wembley Cup Finals were always special occasions, especially back in the days before television programming and commercialization had contrived to dilute the tradition and spirit of the oldest cup football competition in the world. In the few weeks preceding the Final, a whole nation’s attention would be trained on the two finalists, and such was the intense media spotlight focused on their town that even those who had little or no interest in football would be gripped by Cup fever as the excitement just built and built.

However, all the fervour generated in this build-up meant that there were to be many disappointed fans come Cup Final day. The capacity at Wembley Stadium was 100,000 back in the days of terracing, before all-seater stadia became a pre-requisite for hosting top-flight football for safety reasons. Incredulously, for reasons best known to themselves, the Football Association had allocated only 12,000 tickets each to Blackpool and Bolton. That meant that genuine fans not fortunate enough to be allocated a ticket had to make a beeline for the other 76,000 tickets distributed to various bodies, though these often ended up in the hands of ticket touts who would in turn sell them back to desperate fans at inflated prices.

In Blackpool, there was an elderly man and his grandson who were both season-ticket holders at Bloomfield Road and had watched all of Blackpool’s home games together that season, and also many seasons before that. The grandfather had practically converted his grandson into a Blackpool devout since his birth by enthralling him with tales of how he and an old friend would travel to matches together and all the classic matches and legendary players that they had seen in the flesh. Grandfathers, as we know, are often the best liars in the world.

Being season ticket holders, the grandfather and grandson both qualified for tickets to the Final but about a fortnight or so before the match itself, the grandfather sadly passed away.

History would remember this classic 1953 FA Cup Final as the Matthews Final. Only 75 seconds had passed when a rampant Bolton side attacking straight from the kick-off scored to take an early lead. Stan Mortensen equalized for Blackpool in the 35th minute by fooling his marker with a shoulder drop and accelerating away to score off a deflection. However Bolton regained their slender lead going into halftime and it soon became 3-1 five minutes into the second half.

All seemed lost for Blackpool on the sun-kissed emerald turf of Wembley, where they had already lost two previous finals. However the strength of the human spirit could never be underestimated, especially as the Blackpool side contained 38 year-old veteran Stanley Matthews, who had privately promised his father on his deathbed that he would win a FA Cup medal for him. After two previous failed attempts at the final hurdle, this was realistically Matthews’ last chance to make good his promise, but make good of it he did.

In the 66th minute, Matthews dribbled his way down the right wing and delivered an inviting cross into the box, where Mortensen bravely bundled the ball in to make it 2-3. Blackpool had Bolton on the back-foot now and peppered their goal relentlessly. With just two minutes to go, Stan Mortensen scored direct from a free-kick to complete his hat-trick and to level the scores. Three minutes into injury time, Matthews burst down the right again and crossed for Bill Perry to complete the amazing turnaround. 4-3 to Blackpool!

After 23 years in professional football ---in a career interrupted by two World Wars--- Stanley Matthews had finally won a FA Cup Final after orchestrating his team’s victory at the grand old age of 38. He would go on playing professionally until his 50s. However, the protagonist of this story is not Stanley Matthews, and this is probably the way that he would have wanted it, being the unassuming gentleman that he was.

The grandson had decided, after the passing away of his grandfather, that he would watch the season’s big game with his grandfather’s old friend instead. After all, if his grandfather couldn’t go to Wembley, who better to take his place than his old companion? The grandson eventually managed to trace his grandfather’s old friend by phone to Southport. Though despondent and audibly choked to hear of his friend’s death, he emotionally agreed to travel to Wembley in his place, and it was agreed that the grandson would meet him in Southport on the morning of the Cup Final itself.

The big day eventually arrived, and the grandson traveled down to Southport at the crack of dawn, his tangerine and white Blackpool scarf draped proudly around his neck. After a few wrong turns and following the directions of helpful pedestrians, the grandson finally found the old man’s house. A big shock awaited him when the door opened. His grandfather’s old companion was blind, and had been all his life. His grandfather had faithfully accompanied him to all the matches of yesteryear and given him a running commentary on all the action taking place on the field until he relocated to Southport years ago.

After overcoming his initial surprise, the grandson felt an overwhelming sense of pride stirring in his guts. He had arrived in Southport thinking that this elderly gentleman would be taking the place of his grandfather to the Cup Final, when in actual fact it was he himself who was to take his grandfather’s place to Wembley as the blind man’s companion, where he would also give a running commentary on the dramatic game like his grandfather used to. And he could not have scripted a more dramatic story, with Blackpool finding themselves 1-3 down before battling back to win the Cup in the final two minutes of the game.

After the celebrations had ended eventually and the cacophony of noise made by the Blackpool fans had simmered, the grandson found himself walking silently out of the stadium with the old man just like the other supporters that day heading back towards Wembley tube station, with every drop of emotion from despair to elation having being drained out of them by the roller-coaster match. It was some time before one of them spoke, and it was the old man who found his voice first.

"I've been blind all my life, but I'll tell you what, lad," he said, turning to the grandson, "after that, I've seen it all now!"

This world seems to be shrinking everyday, what with the information age superseding all national boundaries and a stream of readily available international news lulling us into thinking that we have all the answers, and the world, at our fingertips. But recent events have shown that life is not quite simple as we think it to be, and that perhaps our world only seems small precisely because we choose to shut our eyes to things of no interest to us, and to people around us whose very existence we do not even notice. In every sporting event the attention is focused on the competitors, but each and every spectator will also have a story to tell. Therefore do not be contented about reading this story about a grandson and his grandfather’s blind companion, for there are 99,998 more untold stories out there.