April 15, 2014, by Ollie

Que sera, sera!

After arriving home on Saturday after a manic day of late night coursework and even later last minute packing I crawled into my bed and set my alarm for 5:30am. It was painful to see 5 hours 27 minutes flash up on the screen, as my phone likes to torment me with how little sleep I will get when I set the alarm, but all I could do was just get my head down. 5:30 on Sunday came and very groggily I dragged myself to my feet and grabbed my Hull City top out of my wardrobe.

It was time for Wembley!

I’m of course talking about the FA cup semi-final. Driving into Hull at 6am to get a coach is hardly ‘the dream’ but heading back out of Hull, finally, after a nearly one hour coach delay to head to the home of English football definitely was. Thankfully the atmosphere hadn’t already kicked off and the fans sharing the coach with me were rather subdued and I managed to get a bit of shut eye in between the kids sat in front of me having a, who can say each others names as many times as possible and as loud as possible to annoy me, competition.

Of course the traffic was manic down the A1, (for some reason we weren’t on the M1 because the Sheffield United coaches were given the M1 by the police or something…) but we arrived in London in time to soak up the sunshine outside the stadium and enjoy the pre-game atmosphere.

I even managed to find my football friend (y), from my last Hull City adventure.

This was my second time visiting Wembley to watch Hull, the first being back in 2008 when we won promotion to the Premier League, Dean Windass scored an absolute stunner that I won’t ever forget.

Many more memories were made on my second visit, before the game kicked off the announcer, announced, there would be a minutes silence before the game in honour of the 96 Liverpool fans who 25 years ago today (at the time of writing this blog) also went to an FA cup semi-final but never returned home. Literally a second after the minute began applause began to ripple around the stadium, within moments everyone was up on the feet and clapping. It was very poignant and the epitome of football fans that without speaking words to one another we all rose to the occasion and paid our respects in a most deserving way. That is one moment that will never leave me for as long as I live.

My first visit to Wembley was a great experience and I didn’t think the second visit to Wembley could be topped, in a way it was and in the same it wasn’t. This game was SO much better, a real ding dong end to end match that finished 5-3. It must have been great for anybody who happened to be watching on the TV that day. 25,000+ Hull fans in full voice when our 3rd goal went in to put us into the lead was something special.

However, there is still another hurdle and I hope that I’ll be there at the final to complete my personal Wembley treble and see Hull do something they have never done before, something I can only imagine my past family never even in a million years dreamt of seeing happen. Dare to dream!

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