Cup Final 1923

The 1923 FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham was the first at Wembley Stadium. The headlines were not about the football but the crowd!

Wembley Stadium hosts its first football match, the Cup Final, with King George V in attendance along with an estimated 250,000 supporters. The capacity for the stadium was 126,000. This film shows extraordinary scenes of crowds swamping the pitch with mounted police galloping amongst the players. The match goes ahead with the crowd (literally) on the sidelines restraining themselves until the final whistle… and Bolton win the cup.

This match is often referred to as the White Horse Final; in the history of the FA Cup the image of the white horse on the pitch in a sea of people is one of the most iconic.