Wembley.... again.

On my return to England I met up with my son in London and we went to the new Wembley stadium for the second time. This trip much more important as Millwall were there in the League one play-off final. (For those unfamiliar with the English football league system this is the old third division).

Anyway who cares why we were there the fact that we were there was enough of a reason for around 48,000 Millwall fans to cross the globe, or venture across the river, to cheer on the lads to a historic first win at the place. Previouse finals were the AWS cup in 1999 (1-0 loss) at the old Wembley and a 3-0 drubbing my Man Utd at the Millenium stadium in Cardiff in 2004.

This time it was going to be different, we were going to WIN, despite not being the in form team, having lost to scunthorpe twice during the regular season, having a young team who had never played there before where the opposition were there earlier this season in the paint pot final (Johnsons paint trophy), or having played in front of such a huge crowd. A record for League one play-off finals 59661.

Crowd segregation - Millwall to the left. Again we completely dominated the crowd with over 80% of the support, like a very big home game.

After going a goal behing against the run op play we hauled ourselves back into it through goals by Gary Alexander,

The first having been described as the best seen at the new stadium to date, a 30 yard screamer into the far top corner, Alexander on right of picture..

The second a header just beating the keeper and crawling over the line.

This was as good as it got. Two silly mistakes at the back, one a goalkeeping howler left us on the wrong end of a 2-3 scoreline.

All in all after wanting to rip northern monkeys to shreds for a few hours, which you will be pleased to hear I did not act upon as I was playing the responsible parent as Lorcan was even worse than me. Probably as I have 30 years more of Millwall letting me down than he has and although it still hurts I am slowly becoming used to it.

Surreal moment of the day came back at the underground station where I found myself going down the stairs side by side with a guy I once spent 29 hours in jail, in Cleethorpes, with. A story for another time, although some may have heard it already.

Roll on next season..........