Over the years I spent at the club, I was always very keen to invite older Stoke favourites in to watch training on a Thursday, and then have lunch with the players.
The week before our win over West Ham in the quarter-finals that sent us to Wembley, I’d asked Gordon Banks, a Stoke legend and a World Cup winner, who had won at Wembley with the club in the 1972 League Cup final, if he would be prepared to do a speech.
He was delighted to be asked and gave a rousing speech about how wonderful it would be for all the players if they made it to Wembley, because he knew a lot of them had never played there before.
Stoke had only made it back to Wembley twice since 1972, for the Football League Trophy in 1992 and 2000, and Gordon also spoke about what it would mean for all our fans, young and old, to experience a trip down to the home of football.
He was right. We sold out our allocation for Wembley, with queues stretching for miles and I have to say it was such a great feeling to see so many happy faces around the city, with everyone buying into such a big occasion.
It was the same on the day too. I don’t think anyone who was at Wembley for our semi-final win over Bolton will ever forget the tremendous din our supporters created from start to finish, and they played a big part in our win.
I’d treated the week of the game as a normal week, with the exception of Wednesday which was our usual day off.
That Wednesday, the lads met at Stoke train station in the morning and we travelled down to Euston, where we all jumped on a first-team coach and set off for Wembley Stadium.
We managed to not only get the bus into the stadium, but also get a quick walk on to the pitch – I wanted to do it because most of our lads had never even been to the ground, let alone played there.
I felt it was an important issue that needed addressing and I am sure the players benefitted from it. We rounded off the day by going to a local Italian restaurant and had dinner and a glass of wine, then came home.
I felt like we were ready for the semi-final, and things went our way on the big day too.
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