The Boodles ISFA Cup Final 2008: The Whale has Landed.
The Victorian headmaster Haig Brown looked unruffled in the turbulent breeze, seemingly immune to the emotions inherent in the occasion. As the young players jogged onto the pitch they drifted past the little stone plaque that silently offered up the information that only a mere 127 years before, the Old Carthusians had lifted the original FA Cup. In a way, just possibly, football was returning to at least one of its historic homes. Even those that thought little about these things could feel the tug of History in the wind. Haig Brown, however, simply concentrated on balancing the school in his right hand. But then again, manly self control is easy for statues.
For many years Charterhouse has not had an entirely happy relationship with the finals of this relatively new competition. Three times finalists and three times losers, there was an unspoken hoodoo hanging over the game. To say that the coaching duo of Bailey and Noble had developed the equivalent of Captain Ahab’s obsession with the big football whale would be silly, but there was something odd in the way the pair scanned the horizon. Earlier omens had not been good. For a while it was a fixture without a home, thanks to problems at Leicester City, and then it became the fixture that the hard Woking rain would not allow, and then, worryingly, it seemed it was the fixture that had run out of school diary time. But, in the end a flipped coin brought the game spinning back to Big Ground.
On the actual day almost the entire school frothed and tumbled around the edge of the pitch as the powerful figure of premiership referee Howard Webb got the game under way. In the late winter sunshine Charterhouse began brightly. Hall and Rogers looked lively up front and for a while the supposedly superior Millfield team could find no rhythm. But gradually they began to play football and Charterhouse started to look a little ragged. Jamieson was booked on twenty six minutes and then just before half time the wind dropped, and time itself stood still, as a ball looped up over goalkeeper George Ellis and the crowd sensed it might just drop under the bar. Instead, it bounced off the bar and breathing was resumed among the faithful. Just before half time Rogers bravely headed from beneath the Millfield keeper’s flailing arms but the ball flashed over. By half time it was honours about even.
In the second half, Millfield began to press and cunningly substituted the wind for a different wind that opened new angles against the House defence. The crowd grew a little subdued. Several Mexican waves broke flimsily on the rocks of worried faces. And yet Charterhouse occasionally flared into action: a marvellous shot on the turn by Hall underlined the fact that this was a game balanced on a waning knife edge. As the match moved towards its climax, Millfield made a substitution but the maroon back four stood firm, Adolphus almost making light of his chores. Watson fought for everything, but it was the sight of a cramp-struck Beddows which did most to suggest that the Charterhouse ship was about to go down. And yet the captain stayed at his station, though this proved to be a location falling further and further back.
In extra time the lofty school flag was pulled almost off its moorings by the wind, but still flapped and fluttered away. The defence seemed similarly yanked about but amazingly resilient. At the heart of it Jamieson yelled and cajoled while Black quietly set about extinguishing small fires around the box. As extra time came towards its end, it slowly dawned that the game that could not find a way to start had become the game that could not find a way to end. Without a goal it was not, perhaps, a great game but it was a quite exceptional display of old fashioned grit by Charterhouse.
During the penalties, never have so many Carthusians been so silent. Even for Millfield’s penalties, each individual’s confrontation with the agony of choice seemed to cast a soundless spell. There were particular moments when the suspense reached an awful crescendo. On the fifth penalty, when defeat was just a kick away, it was Kimmins, not Haig Brown, who held the whole of the school in his hand - or at least on the end of his foot. He despatched it with no fuss, to the overwhelming relief of most. Harry Peat and Sam Parsons faced similar moments of destiny and held their nerves, though there was a hint of a slice in Harry’s audacious top right selection. Then, suddenly it was the hands of goalkeeper George Ellis who grabbed an opportunity. The chance to lift the ISFA jinx fell to the redoubtable Oli Black. He did it with aplomb and the entire crowd of educated and civilised young Carthusians dissolved into mayhem.
It wasn’t quite a miracle, and manly self control was maintained amongst the beaks, and the statues, but for many, and two coaches in particular, the hoodoo was finally blown away.
ENDNOTE
This has been a rather biased account and it should be admitted that Millfield were a little unlucky, exceptionally able and magnanimous in defeat. For those that worry about these things, the final score was 8-7.