CityLife

FA Cup display at Bolton Museum

The FA Cup

OVER its 138-year history, the Football Association Challenge Cup – or the FA Cup as it is more commonly known – has spent 43 years in the north west.

It’s the oldest association football competition and has run almost without exception since 1871, only taking a break during both world wars.

For Bolton Wanderers, the FA Cup story has been a particularly compelling one, because the club has reached the final on seven occasions and taken the trophy home four times since the 1920s.

It seemed essential, then, to curators at Bolton Museum that the National Football Association’s touring exhibition of FA Cup memorabilia, Saved For The Nation, should come to the gallery on its trip around the UK.

Billed as an exhibition of ‘everything you ever wanted to know about the world’s oldest and most-loved cup’, the display opens on Saturday and includes several notable items from the beautiful game’s biggest tournament, chronicling its highs and lows down the decades.

Photographs and film footage of the greatest-ever finals feature alongside sports kits worn by greats of the game Sir Stanley Matthews and Alex Finney. The museum has also included a number of additional items specially requested by Bolton to tell the Wanderers’ cup story more extensively.

The star attraction is expected to be the 1896-1910 FA Cup trophy, on display for the first time outside the National Football Museum since it was donated to the Preston-based gallery in 2005 by David Gold, chairman of Birmingham City.

Stolen

The trophy was commissioned after the previous cup was stolen in 1895 and was awarded to four north west clubs during its lifetime: Manchester City, Manchester United and Everton all took it home once, while Bury won it twice – in 1900 and again in 1903

“Bolton has a great FA Cup pedigree,” says Ben Whittaker, collections rationalisation officer at Bolton and a Manchester United supporter.

“Probably the most famous final Bolton reached was the 1923 final against West Ham, which was the first one played at Wembley.

“Wembley held 125,000, but because it wasn’t an entirely ticketed match, the ground was swamped by people trying to get in. Upwards of 200,000 went into the ground and you couldn’t see the pitch.

“Mounted police had to push the crowd back into the stands, and it has come to be known as the White Horse Final.”

The match was the first of three wins for Bolton in the decade; they took the cup home again in 1926 and 1929, leading them to be nicknamed ‘the 369s’. But Ben says the colour of the FA Cup story speaks to all sports fans because of the prestige of the trophy.

“It’s such an old and historic competition that has so many iconic moments attached to it,” Ben continues. “The cup itself is an iconic object, and the items in this show help to tell the full story.

“Some people believe the prestige of the cup has been lost because some of the bigger clubs have fielded weaker sides because of other fee-paying fixtures. They think that has devalued the competition by not showing it proper respect.

“Hopefully, this exhibition will show what an important competition it still is.”

The exhibition is free and runs until May 23.

For more information on events and exhibitons at Bolton Museum, visit the link on the right.