A Perfect Day

Saturday May 17 in Words and Images

May 20, 2025

So… Unless you don’t follow sports, or live under a rock somewhere on Pluto, or chose to ignore my post on Saturday because you actively hate football, you will know that the team I have followed devotedly for 54 years of my 61 years on this mortal coil - Crystal Palace FC - did it. For the first time in our history, we won a proper trophy, the FA Cup, against Manchester City, the most successful English team of the last decade still helmed by almost unquestionably the greatest manager of the modern footballing era. And not only was I still alive to witness the historic moment, but I was at Wembley, in attendance, among the Palace faithful. What follows is the Perfect Day in Ten Images, some of them moving, with accompanying words. I have tried to limit the number of selfies but they are part of the story, part of the journey.

And if you are one of those who didn’t come here to Wordsmith to read about grown men crying over young men kicking a ball around, well, “normal” service will be resumed later this week. But in the meantime, Dani Rojas has some words for you, rendered all the sweeter by the fact that he sports them in Palace colours per Ted Lasso’s use of our facilities, and that Jamie Tartt, his antagonist, happens to be on loan from Manchester City.

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1) MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM

After an invigorating Park Run in nearby Highbury Fields, and having prepped myself with a utility belt for the long day out (sunblock, phone charger, snacks, water), I’m setting off at midday, wearing the same shirt I wore to Wembley 35 years ago, the day that previously ranked as the Best Day Ever. Under the red and blue replica shirt is the t-shirt from my Marathon March on behalf of the Palace For Life Foundation back in 2022, where I was given a rare honorary exemption to do my own course with my own target – completing all 26.2 miles of the Cats Tail Trail Marathon, walking only, within the running cutoff time. I succeeded with time to spare and raised $1500. On top is a Palace track suit top, and yes, that’s the old “Glaziers” logo and the old claret-and-blue on the cap.

2) CAPTAIN PALACE

On an early train out of Euston, with Palace and City fans sharing the ride together in suitably amicable FA Cup Final Day style. As befits someone – that someone being me – who wrote a/the biography of The Smiths, I happen to love Manchester, and its people, and City fans proved perfectly gracious all day long.1 I got talking immediately to the two ladies in the picture and it turned out the one on the left only moved to Manchester from South London last month; her dad was a mad Palace fan, and she had divided loyalties, having secured a ticket from her friend alongside her on condition she wear a City shirt. “I’ll be sitting on my hands a lot,” she admitted. Meantime, self-styled Captain Palace’s evident passion for our club was an early indicator that City fans hadn’t any hope of matching us for noise or energy - and with that, perhaps confidence too, despite their being the bookies’ odds-on favourites to win. In fact, as I walked into the main station and mingled with hundreds of City fans arriving from Manchester, I couldn’t help singing The Smiths’ fantastic B-side “London”: “Smoke lingers 'round your fingers/Train, heave on to Euston/Do you think you've made/The right decision this time?”

3) PRE-MATCH PEP TALK

On Friday, I found myself invited to this get-together, hosted by celeb Palace fan Ben Bailey Smith, at his small family home in Kensal Green. Under his alter ego Doc Brown, Ben recorded the official theme song for our last two Cup Finals, this year’s entitled “One More Game.” As well as being a qualified singer, rapper, actor and broadcaster, Ben’s also a lovely fella, a wonderful ambassador for the club. Standing behind me as I spin the camera round is my friend John Taylor, who I have known since I was 11 and is a season ticket holder. (John also records as Gaslight Messiah.) The part in the speech about how very few City fans would mark a win today as the best day of our lives, but 100% of Palace fans would surely do so… well, see Item 1.

4) PALACE FOR LIFE

At left, my oldest friend Jeffries; on the right, his best friend Dan. J had his son Cameron with him, who I think is now 22. Re-introduced to me, he asked of his dad, “When did you two first meet?” “1967” came dad’s instant reply. That was before my memories took hold, but it’s true: I’ve known Jeffries since I can remember. We were neighbours, and our mothers were best friends, attending Palace matches together throughout the 1970s; when J’s mother died way too early of breast cancer, my mum stopped attending but for the big days out - which, happily, I was able to treat her to in later years. Meantime, I have Jeffries to thank for my true Palace devotion, as immortalized in Boy About Town; though he lives officially in South London, he had been on business in the States but made sure to be back in England for this day.

5) TIFO TIME

The Holmesdale Fanatics unveiling their tifo before kick-off. Having raised £45,000 to put it together, it shows Dominic and Nathan Wealleans caught in an embrace by their dad on the TV cameras following a Palace wondergoal back in 2011-12. Said dad passed away from cancer in 2017 aged just 49; the sons were at the match together on Saturday and had absolutely no idea that the tifo being unveiled would have that image on it. The story says much about football in general, and the Palace spirit in particular.2

6) GLAD (IT’S) ALL OVER

Somehow more than two hours have gone by since kick-off, the ten minutes of added time which felt like ten years have just concluded, there’s been some controversy, and two Palace players have been taken to hospital for concussion checks after putting their bodies on the line for their club, but the only goal for the match remains the one Palace scored on their first break after 16 minutes of backs-to-the-wall defending. Crystal Palace FC have won the FA Cup, 1-0. Cue the Palace theme song and the tear ducts opening up. But for all the images you’ll have seen of grown men crying, most people around me seemed to react much as I did: with moisty-eyed disbelief and continued celebration rather than a complete emotional meltdown.

As my texts, What’s App, FB and IG, e-mail and more all exploded with congratulations from friends near and far, supporters of other clubs and far flung Palace loyalists who either couldn’t get a ticket and/or could not afford the journey (even my ex-wife texted me from a shop in Salt Lake City, where the staff were busy talking about the game as the final whistle blew), it was apparent that this Cup Coup rekindled the neutral fans’ passion for the FA Cup. Combine it with Newcastle breaking their own 70-year trophyless streak by winning the League Cup at the same ground a couple of months back, against EPL winners Liverpool, and there’s a genuine sense out there that for all the money and power plays corrupting and ruining the Beautiful Game, the Magic remains.

7) WE’RE ALL GOING ON A EUROPEAN TOUR.

I could write a whole essay about these players, who they are, where they come from, and what they represent. Maybe I can just say: This group of Palace players are happy players. They exude as much joy as determination, as much cheer as athleticism. They feel that same dewy-eyed sense of fulfilment of the boyhood dream as much as everyone up in the stands. The fact that Joel Ward, the club captain who, 13 years after coming to Palace, on a ridiculously cheap deal, announced his departure from the club just a week before getting to lift the FA Cup alongside team captain Mark Guehi, seems just one more poetic element among the many narratives of the day. You could see that joy on his face, as with the other Palace players, even from this high. And yes, I was high. Europe, here we come. At last

8) DAYDREAMER

This selfie, leaving the ground an hour after the final whistle, sums up for me that sense of giddy happiness and disbelief. You can maybe see somewhere in it the 9- and 10-year-old kid who endured consecutive relegations in his first full years of attendance; the 12-year-old who followed the 3^rd Division side’s historic progress to the FA Cup Semi-Final back in 76'; the kid who braved crumbling terraces and midweek defeats at places like Port Vale, Wrexham, Walsall and more in his pre-teen years; the fan who attended the historic 1979 championship match when we packed 52,000 into the ground, an attendance that can never be matched; the young adult who drifted away in the 1980s as the club alienated its support, but who, like so many, came back as manager Steve Coppell turned things around; the 26-year old who came back for that 1990 FA Cup Final; the expat Palace fan who looked at the football calendar every time he planned a trip back to Britain, so as to catch Palace games; the fan who sat up on Twitter during the 2016 FA Cup Final in the middle of the night because he was in Sri Lanka and couldn’t watch it live; the fan who, only two months ago, extending his already long trip home for his mother’s death and funeral one more week for the Quarter-Final at Fulham, left his hard tickets on a kitchen table in Yorkshire, realized as much when his train was five minutes from London the night before, and promptly took the next train back north and a 6am train the following morning to attend. Dreams do come true. Sometimes you just have to wait a lifetime and make a few journeys for them to do so.

9) ALL THE WAY FROM MEDILLIN

My travel story was far from unique, neither the greatest nor the most special. On the queue to get into the White Horse pub that’s part of the Wembley Stadium complex after the match (for my first drink of the day, though not my last!) I met Bill, a 65-yer old Kiwi raised in London who had come back from New Zealand for the weekend. I heard the story of someone sitting next to a 90-year-old woman who has been attending since she was 14. I know of a young adult came back from his South American gap year, all the way from Guatemala. But as a truly global sign of what football can mean to people, these two Colombians here came all the way from their expat home in Toronto to support Palace’s two star Colombian players, the official MOTM Daniel Muñoz and Jefferson Lerma. I can only assume they were some of the newest Palace fans at the match, given that both players are relatively fresh signings, and I didn’t ask how they got their tickets. But I suspect they too will be Palace For Life.

10) GLAD ALL OVER (AGAIN)

We end with a beautiful video accompanying a lovely story. The woman you see here seated but singing along is 72 years old, and lives in Horley (“solid Palace,” she assured me in case I thought it crossed into Brighton territory). Her husband was a passionate Palace fan all his life, and instilled that love in his bride and their now adult daughter, who you see happily singing along behind the table. Sadly, he passed away 18 months ago. Saturday May 17 would have been the couple’s Golden Wedding Anniversary. She was there for him, and believes he was there with her, just like so many of us were there in part for and with our own absent loved ones who likewise loved the club or/and helped instill our own passion for the game. Yeah, on a Perfect Day like this, football is your perfect metaphor for life.