1927 FA Cup Final

Event

1926–27 FA Cup

Cardiff City	Arsenal

1	0

Date

23 April 1927

Venue

Wembley Stadium, London

Referee

W. F. Bunnell (Lancashire)

Attendance

91,206

← 1926

1928 →

The 1927 FA Cup Final was an association football match between Cardiff City and Arsenal on 23 April 1927 at the original Wembley Stadium (then called Empire Stadium). The showpiece match of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (better known as the FA Cup), it was the first such final to be broadcast on the radio. The victory by Cardiff marked the only occasion in the history of the tournament that the trophy had been won by a team outside England; the Cup had previously been referred to in the press as the "English Cup".

Each team had progressed through five rounds to reach the final, having each entered in the third round. Both teams required a single replay in different rounds to progress, but otherwise won each of their games. In the fifth round, Cardiff knocked the reigning champions, Bolton Wanderers out of the cup. Both teams had a mixture of home and away games on their route to the final, but Arsenal were not required to play outside of London after the initial fourth round match. By the quarter-finals, the two teams were the only Football League Division One teams left in the competition.

Arsenal had injury problems with Horace Cope ruled out. Additional trains were put on to get Cardiff's fans to Wembley, and police reinforcements to keep fans at bay who had been sold fake tickets. A concert was held prior to the game, which included the first rendition of Abide with Me, which has since become a cup final tradition. It was the first FA Cup Final broadcast on the radio, which coined the phrase "back to square one". The match was watched by 91,206 in the stadium, and a further 15,000 fans listened in Cardiff's Cathays Park to the radio broadcast.

Both teams had opportunities to score, but the only goal of the game was credited to Hughie Ferguson after the ball slipped out of the hands of goalkeeper Dan Lewis, and he knocked the ball into the net with his elbow. Afterwards, he blamed his new wool jersey, saying that it was greasy. This resulted in the Arsenal tradition of washing goalkeeper jerseys before every match. Following the match, the press called it the "Singing Final" and highlighted that the FA Cup had gone to Wales for the first time. In the following years, Cardiff suffered a decline in their fortunes and didn't reach the FA Cup final again until 2008. Arsenal won the trophy in 1930 and went on to become the most successful team in the history of the tournament.

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