page_title: 1927 FA Cup Final
section_title: Post match and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: 1927 FA Cup Final / Post match and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Fred Keenor
context_page_description: The 1927 FA Cup Final was an association football match between Cardiff City and Arsenal on 23 April 1927 at the Empire Stadium. The final was the showpiece match of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup, organised by the Football Association. Cardiff, one of the few Welsh teams taking part, won the match 1–0. Their victory remains the only occasion the trophy, which was previously known as the "English Cup", has been won by a team based outside England.
  The teams entered the competition in the third round as members of the Football League First Division and progressed through five rounds to reach the final. In the fifth round, Cardiff knocked out the reigning champions, Bolton Wanderers. By the quarter-final stage, Arsenal and Cardiff were the only teams from the First Division remaining.
  On the day of the final, additional trains were provided to transport Cardiff's fans to Wembley, and police reinforcements were deployed to keep at bay fans who had been sold fake tickets. A concert held before the game included a rendition of "Abide with Me"; singing this song before the match has since become a cup final tradition.
context_section_description: The Cardiff City victory in the 1927 FA Cup Final remains the only time that the trophy has been won by a team outside England. At the time it had been referred to as the "English Cup". This was a highlight of the coverage in the press afterwards, the Daily Mirror using the headline "How England's Football Cup Went to Wales", as was the volume of singing that took place during the proceedings. An article in the Hull Daily Mail even went as far as to suggest that the match would be remembered for the singing specifically, calling it the "Singing Final". There was an open air radio broadcast of the match in Cathays Park attended by 15,000 fans, and after the victory the team's colours were strung throughout the city, and local shopkeepers made replicas of the trophy out of butter to display in shop windows. Cardiff goalkeeper Tom Farquharson, who became the first Irish goalkeeper to win the FA Cup, acquired the match ball after the game and donated it to the Church. The ball is now stored at the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame at St Fagans National Museum of History.
  After the match, the Cardiff team headed to a hotel in Bloomsbury before heading to Windsor and Eton College on the following day. They toured the College, and some of the players visited Windsor Castle and Kempton Park Racecourse. They headed back to Cardiff later that day from Paddington station, finding themselves delayed at several stations en route as fans flooded platforms at Reading, Swindon and Newport to see the team. They eventually arrived in Cardiff at 6:35 pm. The team were mobbed at the station with some of the crowd breaking through a police cordon at the entrance before crossing railway lines to greet the players on the platform. When the team disembarked, they were met by motor coaches and a band, and driven to the City Hall. Some 150,000 fans lined the streets of Cardiff to welcome the team back home. After leading some communal singing outside the City Hall, the team and their wives attended a dinner and dance in the building. While some press reports claimed that Keenor had said that the team were lucky to have won, he refuted the claim, saying that Cardiff's defence had led them to victory. In 2012, a statue of Keenor lifting the FA Cup trophy was erected outside the club's Cardiff City Stadium in commemoration of his side's victory.
  The Arsenal goalkeeper Lewis blamed a new jersey for the mistake that resulted in the goal, saying that the wool was greasy and allowed the ball to slip from his grip. As tradition ever since, Arsenal goalkeepers have always washed their jerseys before each game. The Cardiff captain Keenor later commented on his view of the goal: "He (Ferguson) put such a spin on it that it would have been difficult for the 'keeper to have saved cleanly. The ball twisted in his hands, bounced onto his chest and curled back into the net. Len Davies was challenging and I think Lewis took his eye off the ball for a fatal second as he went down for it". When presented with his runner-up medal after the game, Lewis was reported to have thrown the award away before it was recovered by his teammates. Lewis was even accused by some supporters of deliberately throwing the game to allow a side from his home nation to win the competition.
  The Arsenal captain, Buchan, praised the Cardiff team saying "My congratulations to Cardiff City on being the first club in history to take the Cup out of England. We did our very utmost to prevent them from doing so, but we did not succeed. As, however, the trophy is gone to Cardiff, there is no one who more heartily congratualtes them than the captain of the losers. Cardiff played an honest, clean game, each member of the team obviously striving to do his utmost and my final words are good luck to the City and good luck to Wales and its association football now that they have the Cup."
  Less than a fortnight later, Cardiff beat Rhyl 2–0 in the final of the Welsh Cup to claim an unprecedented transnational cup double. Cardiff also qualified for 1927 FA Charity Shield, defeating amateur team Corinthian by two 
caption: A statue of Cardiff City captain Fred Keenor with the FA Cup located at the Cardiff City Stadium
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 6.3.9600.17031", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 6.3.9600.17031", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:31 19:15:50", "Image ExifOffset": "2238", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}