Cup Final Day Memories

Here we are again it's FA Cup final day.
I think this year it has reached it's lowest point as I haven't seen one advert on telly to tell me when it is on, footie programmes on the box only talk about the Premier league and it's hardly had a mention in the papers.
My mother-in-law although not a big footie fan usually watches the big matches and always asks me who I'll be supporting did not know the game was this weekend.

The fact the game has been moved to 5:15pm probably means the FA itself don't really care for the match either as there is a full fixture list of league 1 & 2 games today plus one Premier league game, the chances of most of the supporters of the 3 O'clock games getting home to watch the match are slim.

So different from the way I grew up with the FA Cup, the first final I can remember watching was the 1970 Chelsea v Leeds final which was a real blood n' guts affair and ended up 2-2 with Chelsea winning the replay (remember those), the following year was another classic with Arsenal beating Liverpool 2-1 with Charlie George's famous goal and on through the seventies with more classic games like underdogs Sunderland beating Leeds, Southampton  beating Man U, Ipswich turning over Arsenal, the Hammers beating Fulham, Arsenal's 3-2 win over United etc.
The first one I went to was West Ham's win over Arsenal not a great game but I didn't care and as it's turned out we were the last lower league team to win the Cup.
Throughout all these years the FA Cup final was the only football anyone ever seemed to talk about, there would be cup final related programmes on telly all week, the newspapers were full of it and everyone would be backing a team in the final. Cup final day on telly was nothing but build up to the 3 O'clock kick off with both the BBC and ITV putting on all sorts of cup final special programmes, interviews with all the celebs of the time and the famous "on the bus with" features, the teams would come out for their walk around in their new suits and while the anthems and Abide with me were being played the teams would be on the pitch ready for the pre match presentation to whichever royal was on duty.
This build up happened most years right up until the nineties when it suddenly seemed to tail off, the fact the Premier league was up and running probably had something to do with it?
I think it was 1999 Man U's treble year when for the first time the Cup final didn't seem to matter as much, obviously United were thinking about the following weeks European cup final and the press and others seemed to treat the game with a bit of contempt.
The final moved off to Cardiff after Wembley was closed for rebuilding and most of the games there were pretty good, but all that Cup final build up had been removed and you would just tune in about 1 O'clock for the games.
Last year the Cup final wasn't even the last game of the season and Premier league games were played on the same day, this year they have gone further :(

As for today's game Chelsea should be favourites as they have won 4 of the last 6 Wembley cup finals and Didier Dogbreath just can't stop scoring there. Liverpool's last 2 FA Cup wins were both due to the usual biased refs they always seem to get, a 2-1 win over Arsenal where with Arsenal leading 1-0 Henchoz handballed Ljunberg's shot off the line and the ref and lino were the only people in the ground not to see it, then their penalty kick win over West Ham in 2006 where cheating bastard Reina came running out to meet every Hammers penalty without ever being pulled up for it?
Today's ref Phil Dowd doesn't seem to have any obvious bias but he did referee the Chelsea Liverpool Carling cup game this season and issued 6 yellows with 5 of them to Chelsea.