(A Sunny Day Out In Cardiff, May 2004)’
Written and Edited, January-May 2025
I started this blog back at the beginning of January 2025. The only expectations for this current season, 2024-2025, were that we, Crystal Palace, would stay out of the relegation zone, and be in the English topflight for another year. However, as I will come to later, things got a whole lot more interesting come May…
Anyway, to the main subject of this blog. When Joe, my brother, and I headed towards Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium (as it was known in May 2004) for the Championship Play Off Final, hopes were high, but expectation was low. As Palace lifelong suffering supporters, this state of mind was in our DNA.
Even by our standards, the 2003/2004 season was extraordinary (until this current one…). We started off by flying out of the traps. By the end of August, we were topping the Championship (the old Division 2), and a promotion push was on the cards. However, being Palace, things were never that straightforward. Only two years earlier, we were in the same position, until Steve ‘Judas’ Bruce, our then manager, decided that another team held better prospects for his career. That club went up, and we ended up mid-table that season. Anyway, after a bright start, we couldn’t find a win for love nor money. Consequently, we fell down the table, faster than a brick in water. By Christmas, all the talk was about fighting off relegation, as we were in the bottom three.
Steve Kember, the manager, was issued with a P45, and sent packing in a taxi. In steps Ian Dowie. Initially, Dowie was given the simple objective of keeping us in the
Championship. Promotion wasn’t even rumoured, that ship had sailed many months earlier. Over the next few weeks, as winter turned to spring, we started to string a few decent results together. Come Easter, we were sniffing at the fringes of the ‘Play Off’ places.
The Play Off system was introduced in 1987, to generate a bit of fan excitement and hope for teams, other than those in or near the top three of the league. The top two clubs gain automatic promotion to the next division, the next four play each other in two-legged semi-final matches. The winners then meet in a high stakes’ final, for the third promotion place. These games take place in May, after the regular season has finished. Since 1990, the final has been played at Wembley Stadium. However, with the building of the new ‘Wembley’, these games (as well as the FA and League Cup finals), were switched to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium from 2001 to-2006.
Understandably, the teams who finish third at the end of the regular season, if they failed to be promoted through the Play-Off system, would feel unfairly ‘done-by’. Especially if the one in sixth place go up. Over the years, Palace have had mixed fortunes, sometimes this worked in our favour, and other times against us.
One could argue that we had luck on our side for the season in question. The last game of the normal season, we snuck into sixth place. If I remember correctly, we were reliant on other teams’ misfortunes. Anyway, we were in a two-legged semifinal against Sunderland. The first being at home, and the second away up north (both games Joe and my dad went to). As always with such high-stake games, things were tight. However, on a balmy Friday night, we came away with a narrow 2-1 win at Selhurst Park (our home ground). The second leg was the following Monday, on a rather cold night, up north. We headed up the M1 to The Stadium of Light, (home of Sunderland), where another tight encounter ensued. At the end of normal and extra time, the aggregate score was level, 3-3 as Sunderland won 2-1 on the night. So, there was a dreaded penalty shootout. We were victorious and went through to a showdown final with our East London neighbours, West Ham (the Hammers).
At the time, I was a ‘young’ admin worker with Wirral Adult Mental Health Services. My first, and only, full-time paid job to date. Thanks to a very supportive line-manager and other colleagues, I felt my confidence building daily. I was becoming deft on the main telephone switchboard and added a new dimension to our team with my flair for design. Occasionally, I made the odd slip-up, probably because my mind was on things other than the job…
My dad has been a Crystal Palace season ticket holder since 1995, so was able to secure tickets for the play-off final. As it happened, this game clashed with a holiday he had already booked. This was probably because he didn’t anticipate this situation being a likely scenario; as we had been in danger of being relegated earlier in the season. Anyway, Joe and I seized on this rare opportunity. Unlike other clubs, this type of game was not a given right for teams like ours. I booked annual leave for over the late Spring Bank holiday, (the game being on the Saturday) and stayed with my Mum in Winchester, Hampshire. I planned to meet Joe in Cardiff, as we would be travelling from different parts of the country.
I presumed most fans would be travelling from London Paddington to Cardiff. As I would be going via Southampton, I thought the trains should’ve been less crowded. How wrong I was. When I got off at Southampton, the platform was a sea of claret and blue, and red and blue – the team colours of the Hammers and the Eagles respectively. I had a short wait for my connecting train. On hearing the announcement, I made my way to board, checked for my travel tickets, “oh ****!”, I didn’t have them on me. I experienced a mini meltdown. I must have left them on the seat where I was sitting. Fortunately, they were still there. Panic over, I made the journey up to Cardiff without any further hitches. I met Joe at the station, and we went for a couple of pre-match pints.
The atmosphere in Cardiff was fantastic, perhaps due to the added element of a London Derby. Different pubs were designated for each set of fans, to avoid any drunken shenanigans. We, and many others, were standing outside in the sun, serenading a group of Hammers fans, who were marching past, with a cheery little number ‘stick your bubbles’ (‘Forever Blowing Bubbles’ being the Hammer’s club anthem) up your ****s’. Dinking on an empty stomach, buzzing on the whole occasion, I was getting a little tipsy. It was a bit of a concern (more for Joe I think), whether we would be allowed in the stadium. Thankfully, I managed to sober up enough to avoid detection, and we duly took our seats. We were high in the stadium eaves and had a great view looking down onto the side of the goal.
The game was a nervy affair, given the Premier League television pot of gold lying in wait for the winners. The first half was a stalemate, 0-0. As the game went on, Palace were gaining in confidence. We were the underdogs, so in a way had nothing to lose (apart from a few million quid). Midway through the second half, up steps Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock, striking to put us in front. As expected, the Hammers piled on the pressure searching for an equaliser. Fierce nail-biting all around the Palace cohort. After what seemed like an eternity, the ref blew the final whistle, and we were in the ‘promised land’. Now it was time to kick the butts of Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal….
The celebrations went on in the stadium way past the end of the game. Afterwards, we ‘had’ to have a pint to celebrate this famous win and calm our nerves, before making our respective journeys back home. As expected, the train was standing room only, but that didn’t matter as I had the sweet taste of victory in my mouth. This was truly a day to remember.
However, sadly, there was no such happy ending. As play-off winners, we were favourites to go straight back down. This proved painfully true. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but in the final game of the season, we were safe with just minutes to go. We needed to hold on for a win to survive relegation, away to one of our bitter South London rivals, Charlton Athletic. But true to Palace form, we let in a late equaliser, and back to the Championship we went. This yoyoing was usual for us, with just 1-year stays in the Premier League, many times, from 1992 to 2014.
2014 Ten years later, we again got through the Play offs, to gain our ‘rightful’ place with the English footballing elite. Eleven seasons later, we are still here. As I hinted earlier, this current season, 2024/2025, has turned out to be a very special one in our long and eventful history. We reached the FA Cup Wembley Semi Final in April, overcoming teams in lower divisions in rounds three to five, and Premier League London rival, Fulham, in the quarter final. In the semi-final, we were pitched against high flying Aston Villa, for the first time in the competition we were the underdogs. However, we smashed them out of the park with a stunning 3-0 win. We were in the final, against the mighty Man City who were English Champions for the previous four years and had won the Treble only two seasons earlier. On top of that, they had thrashed us 5-2 in the league a few weeks earlier. To win was going to be a tall order, but we were quietly confident given our strong performances in the semi and in recent league games (except the aforementioned).
The game started off as predicted, Man City having most of the possession, but, thanks to our tireless defending, they were going nowhere fast. That was until the sixteenth minute when we hit them on the break, and Eberechi Eze smashed home a goal for a 1-0 advantage! The game continued in this fashion for the remainder of the match. To be fair, we were lucky not to have Dean Henderson, our goalie, sent off midway through the first half, for a hand ball outside the penalty area. However, VAR (Video Assisted Referee) deemed technically this was not a red card offence. Erling Haarand, a City striker, was assessed as “moving away from goal”, which proved to be a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card’ for us. A few minutes later, Henderson saved a penalty which kept us narrowly ahead. It was nail-biting throughout the whole game, not least the ten minutes additional time at the end of the second half. My beer fridge continually needed restocking. The ref finally blew for full-time; we had won our first major trophy and a place in next season’s Europa League.
Emotions of overwhelming joy erupted, from the fans at Wembley all the way to the many pubs and homes across Croydon and beyond. Supporters had suffered two FA Cup Final defeats, 1990 and 2016, and many more heartbreaks, following our beloved club. This match was a moment we all celebrated and could feel proud of South London. This will live in the memories of fans for the rest of our days!
In my next blog, I will be publishing my diary of a trip of lifetime to The Big Apple, New York City, back in October 2005.
Jarmin Apple
May 2025
"Drop-in and Chill Out" 