On This Day – 28th April
Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United played in the first ever FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium on this day in 1923.
The match was overshadowed however by the huge crowd that attended, with many thousands of extra fans gaining entry and swarming the perimeter of the pitch. Some fans even crossed over the touchline and onto the pitch.
The stadium’s capacity was 125,000 at the time but around 300,000 people were estimated to be inside the new national stadium. The police tried valiantly to deal with the huge numbers and several police horses were needed to restore order. One of the horses that stood out because of its colour. He was a white horse called Billy and because of his notoriety, the final became known as ‘The White Horse Final’ thereafter!
Bolton won the match 2-0 to record the first of three FA Cup wins in the 1920’s (the other two wins were in 1926 and 1929). Their final FA Cup triumph came in 1958 when they beat Manchester United, three months after the Munich Air Disaster.
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