The Football Association Challenge Cup

The first FA Cup competition in season 1871-72 had fifteen entries. (This season more than 700 took part.) Wanderers, a team formed by ex-public school and university players, won the first final 1-0 against Royal Engineers at Kennington Oval. A crowd of 2,000 attended the match and they each paid one shilling for the privilege.

The first Cup Final goal was scored by Morton Betts, playing under the assumed name of 'A.H. Chequer'. He was an Old Harrovian who had once played for Harrow Chequers.

The original trophy, much smaller than the present one, was made by Messrs Martin, Hall & Co. and cost £20. In 1895, after Aston Villa had won the competition, the cup was stolen from the window of a firm of football outfitters in Birmingham where it had been placed on display. It was never recovered.

The second trophy was a replica of the first, and was last used in 1910 before being presented to the FA's long-serving president Lord Kinnaird. It was sold at Christie's on 19 May 2005 for £420,000 (£478,400 including auction fees and taxes) to David Gold, the chairman of Birmingham City.

A new, larger, trophy was bought by the FA in 1911 designed and manufactured by Fattorini's of Bradford and won by Bradford City in its first outing, the only time a team from Bradford has reached the final. This trophy still exists but is now too fragile to be used, so an exact replica was made by Toye, Kenning and Spencer and has been in use since the 1992 final. A "backup" trophy was made alongside the existing trophy in 1992, but it has not been used so far, and will only be used if the current trophy is lost, damaged or destroyed.

The present trophy, played for since 1992, is the competition's fourth and an exact replica of the third. Manchester United have won the Cup the most times (11), followed by Arsenal (10) and Tottenham Hotspur (eight). Forty-two different clubs have won it.

In January 1922 the Duke of York, later to become King George VI, cut the first turf to mark the beginning of the building of Wembley Stadium and it was completed in under a year at a cost of £750,000. The 1923 FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United was the first football match at the new stadium and it drew an estimated crowd of 200,000, vastly exceeding the official capacity. It was only due to the good nature of the spectators and the efforts of the police, notably PC George Scorey on his white horse 'Billy', that the match took place at all.

The Cup Final was played at Wembley in every year, excluding the war years, until 2000 when the old stadium was demolished. For the next 6 years the FA Cup Final took place in Cardiff's Milennium Stadium. The final returned to Wembley in May 2007. The FA Cup has become established as one of the country's great sporting institutions. It is now over 130 years old and yet, season by season, it generates tremendous interest not only in the country of its birth but all over the world. The history and tradition of the competition, and the pageantry of the Cup Final, is familiar to millions.

The new Wembley hosted its first Final in 2007. Sir Bobby Robson, a Cup winner as Ipswich Town's manager, once said: "The FA Cup Final is the greatest single match outside the World Cup Final - and it's ours".

Extract from http://www.thefa.com/TheFACup/