'I slept with the FA Cup that night': On the 17th anniversary - the magical inside story of Portsmouth's 2008 Wembley triumph

An exhausted Kev McCormack opted to duck out of festivities a little early. Thankfully, the FA Cup lying in bed alongside him didn’t disturb his sleep.

Pompey’s kitman was a natural choice to serve as the trophy’s guardian. A three-time ABA super-heavyweight champion who boxed for Wales in three Commonwealth Games, few would dare tangle with the former Royal Marine.

Saturday marks 17 years since Harry Redknapp’s side triumphed in the 2008 FA Cup final at Wembley, courtesy of a 1-0 victory over Cardiff.

McCormack was subsequently entrusted with its protection. On a night when Glen Johnson and Jamie Ashdown had their winners’ medals stolen during celebrations at The Oakley Court in Windsor, thankfully the biggest prize of all was in safe hands.

Such was his admirable dedication, the former bricklayer even opted to occupy the same hotel double bed as the FA Cup on that memorable Saturday evening in May 2008.

‘As we pulled away from Wembley, a mate rang up. He was at a Cwmbran pub and oblivious to how I was spending my day,’ McCormack told The News.

‘He asked what I was doing. My reply was “I’m just coming out of Wembley now. I’m sat at the front of the team bus with the FA Cup on my lap”.

‘He went “Shut up” - and, at that point, the bus came into view of the cameras. He was watching the TV in the pub and shouting “There’s my mate, there’s my mate”.

‘They wanted the trophy at the front of the bus so all the fans could see it as we travelled back to the hotel. Someone had to keep an eye on it - and no-one was going to nick it off me, were they!

‘We had a meal at our hotel afterwards, after which the players then headed into London. The party continued, but I was shattered. The day takes it out of you, to be fair. I was whacked and went to bed early.

‘The FA Cup came with me. The only time it left my sight was when I closed my eyes. I slept well too - it was a better cuddle than my missus!’

Pompey’s Wembley hero was Kanu, whose remarkable trophy haul already consisted of the Champions League with Ajax, two Premier League titles and two FA Cups with Arsenal, and the Uefa Cup while representing Inter Milan.

Unable to find a club following his release by West Brom in the summer of 2006, the striker had been training in a London park before being offered a career lifeline by Harry Redknapp.

The striker subsequently scored twice against Blackburn on his Premier League debut for Pompey in August 2006, albeit missing a penalty for what would have been a remarkable hat-trick. Just 21 months later, he had won the FA Cup once more.

Although there were medical concerns over signing of the former Nigerian international, particularly from then-Blues physio Gary Sadler.

Portsmouth FA Cup hero was ‘physical marvel’

‘No-one ever knows how old Kanu is. Apparently, he didn’t have a birth certificate, so they worked out his age from when he started playing football. But we just didn’t know,’ said Sadler, who joined the club in 2001 and spent nine years at Fratton Park.

‘He came to us at the age of 30 and finished at 36. Looking at him, he probably was two or three years older than what he claimed to be.

‘When Kanu arrived for his medical, his knee just wouldn’t move. We were looking at it, scratching our heads thinking “How can he actually walk?”. ‘He couldn’t bend his knee fully, he couldn’t straighten his knee fully. Surely this can’t be right?

‘So I phoned Arsenal’s head physio Gary Lewin. We had both trained at Guys Hospital, although Gary was a few years before me. I knew he’d had Kanu at Arsenal, so it seemed sensible to carry out some background research.

‘Straight away, off the top of his head, Gary responded: “Right knee, doesn’t move”. This problem even existed when they had signed him six-and-a-half years earlier! Kanu was a physical marvel.

‘As a physio, we cannot pull out of a move, all we can do is present a report. It is then down to the powers that be to either sign the player, withdraw, or change the deal. They still wanted to sign him - and he stayed with us for another six years.

‘Kanu scored twice for us in his third appearance, which was a 4-0 win at Middlesbrough (August 2006) in midweek. For his second goal, he ran from well in his own half before chipping Boro goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer.

‘Bearing in mind he hadn’t even had a pre-season with us, when our return flight landed, he couldn’t move, he had seized right up. So we put a kit skip onto a luggage trolley and sat him on top of it, wheeling him out of the airport to a car!’

Former Solent University student Jason Broomfield turned up for his first day at Pompey’s training ground in August 2007 with a broken foot, following a 5-a-side football incident.

Employed in the club’s media department to produce video content, just nine months later the Darlington supporter would be dancing around in a Wembley dressing room with Sol Campbell & Co celebrating an FA Cup victory.

Hermann Hreidarsson grabbed me round the throat and laughed

Broomfield added: ‘I had been out of university a year. I joined Pompey the season they won the FA Cup, two years later they were bankrupt and I was on the scrapheap! It was a hell of a two-and-a-half year ride.

‘With Kanu, if you put him on concrete or a solid floor he might as well have a zimmer frame in front of him. He reminded me of a Thunderbird. Put him on grass, though, and he was like a gazelle, he just glided.

‘I never once saw him use the stairs in the Portakabin which housed the changing rooms, treatment room and offices at the training ground. Instead he used this disabled lift which would beep as it slowly transported him up to the first floor. One time his journey interrupted a press conference taking place!

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‘Of those players, Hermann was my favourite. He was very excitable and loved getting people in headlocks, he found it funny. The first time I spoke to him, he punched me in the chest and said “Ha, ha, I like you”.

‘He once grabbed me by the throat and held me over the top of the stairs at the training ground, laughing the whole time. Then somebody came up the stairs and said “Let the poor boy down, Hermann”. I was about to knee him in the nuts.

‘On one occasion, Peter Crouch turned up with a pigeon jammed in the front grill of his car. It was still alive and everyone was wondering what to do. So Hermann ripped it out, lobbed it over the fence, then shouted “That’s how we deal with things in Iceland”.

‘It was amazing being around these players. I once got on the team bus for an away game and David James was sat there reading Animal Farm. He kept saying to me: “This is like us, we are all in this book”. He thought of himself as an intellectual, he wanted to be Eric Cantona.

‘Ahead of our FA Cup fifth round game at Preston (February 2008), we spent five days in Malaga, Spain, for a warm-weather training camp. Yet it was torrential rain and absolutely freezing, worse than England.

‘Aston Villa were out there as well, so both squads would end up in Lineker’s Bar drinking on quite a few occasions. There were 30 footballers in there at one point, people like Gareth Barry.

‘I went with them and was doing Tequila with Jamie Ashdown and Villa players. I may have got a bit drunk and, for the rest of the stay, Papa Bouba Diop would repeatedly say to me “Bad boy, bad boy”. He was such a lovely guy.’

Portsmouth heroes Kanu and John Utaka sang Bob Marley on a karaoke

Upon Pompey’s return from Spain, they beat Preston 1-0 in a Sunday televised match, with Darren Carter scoring a stoppage-time own goal, albeit claimed by Hreidarsson with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Redknapp’s men then dispatched Manchester United 1-0 at Old Trafford in the quarter-finals, followed by beating West Bromwich Albion in the Wembley semi-finals, with Kanu the match winner.

Then it was a date with Cardiff in the 2008 FA Cup final on May 17, 2008.

‘Harry wanted to get us away from the Portsmouth area so we could concentrate on the final, so we trained on the Thursday morning before heading to Windsor to stay in a hotel for two nights,’ Sadler added.

‘That night we were booked into a nice Italian restaurant in Bray. The players were in their club tracksuits, there was no alcohol, and we could choose what to eat from the menu. It was a really nice evening.

‘Then, suddenly, Hermann appeared wearing an Elvis Presley costume and a guitar, nobody had a clue it was happening. He started to sing half-a-dozen Elvis songs on karaoke - he wasn’t even that good - but it kickstarted the mood.

‘Have you seen the series ‘Vikings’? It’s about mad people who jump into a wooden ship, row for 3-4 days across the North Sea in all weathers and then get out, pick up a sword and kill somebody.

‘Hermann’s a Viking. He’s wacky, absolutely unique. Sometimes he’d walk into our medical room, throw things around and then walk out. He found it funny.’

‘I chased chased Sylvain Distin around Wembley pitch trying to punch him’

McCormack’s song choice is traditionally Tom Jones’ ‘Green Green Grass of Home’, although, on that occasion, he declined to take the mike.

Instead he preferred to let Hermann take centre stage with renditions of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘An American Trilogy’, followed by Kanu and John Utaka’s duet of Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’.

McCormack added: ‘Kanu and Utaka were tone deaf, while Hermann has to be the worst Elvis impersonator I have ever seen, he didn’t even sound like him. It was more shouting than singing. He’s actually more of a Kings of Leon fan.

‘I could never say anything bad about him, though. Apart from the time he rugby tackled me at the training ground, putting me through this plasterboard wall and into my laundry room. I had to get our former player Dave Waterman to replaster it.

‘Hermann would also put apprentices in the laundry baskets and spin them around, just messing about. He’s great for a laugh, such a funny man, and a fierce competitor.

‘I always like to put out the kit at the ground the evening before a game, it saves a lot of time, so, on the Friday night, myself, Barry Harris and Clark Denford went to Wembley. It was deserted, no-one around but security, nothing but the emergency lights on.

‘We sat on a bench in the dug-outs and reflected for 10 minutes, taking it all in. It was surreal. Tomorrow Pompey would be playing in an FA Cup final.’

A crowd of 89,874 - still a record for a football match at the new Wembley - witnessed a 1-0 Pompey victory over Championship Cardiff, with Kanu’s close-range finish following Utaka’s right-wing cross settling matters.

As kitman, McCormack never received a medal, although he did claim the match ball, handed to him by referee Mike Dean, which he asked the 2008 FA Cup winners to kindly autograph.

The Welshman added: ‘Me and Sylvain Distin would pretend fight all the time. During our FA Cup final celebrations on the pitch, he rib-tickled me when I wasn’t expecting it, right in the kidneys. It hurt bad, I was passing blood for a couple of days afterwards.

‘So I began to chase him around the Wembley pitch, only to give up after 10 seconds. I was never going to catch him. Imagine it I had!

‘In the dressing room afterwards, I was saturated with champagne, soaked from head to toe. They just seemed to get me. In the end, I didn’t bother worrying about it.

‘As you get older, you reminisce more, it brings it home to me again. Those days don’t come along too often, that’s why I made the most of the following day on the open-topped bus through Southsea with 200,000 cheering us on.

‘They had a load of beer on our bus, but no bottle opener, so I ended up cracking open bottles with my teeth for the likes of Hermann and the other players.

‘There were three buses in total, but our bus, which was the players’ one, didn’t have any toilets. So you had to jump off it while it was moving and run to the third bus, which did have one. It makes me laugh even now.’

‘Such great, great days at Portsmouth’

Kev McCormack is now in his 26th year as Pompey kitman and can usually be found at their Hilsea training ground, sat on his chair positioned outside the laundry room, hoping to catch a bit of sunshine.

Gary Sadler opted to leave the Blues in the summer of 2010 to set up his own physiotherapy clinic in Salisbury Road, Cosham, which has a large framed photograph of Sylvain Distin hanging on the facing wall when you enter.

As for Jason Broomfield, he was made redundant from Pompey in March 2010 after the club entered administration, yet is still involved in the audio-visual industry as an engineer, working in London.

Now aged 41, he added: ‘Pompey’s players would normally leave their cars at our Eastleigh training ground and, following one midweek match, after returning to Bournemouth Airport, Kanu and John Utaka had no intention of going back to collect them as they wanted to go straight home.

‘As I had parked at the airport, I was asked whether I could drive them Bournemouth/Southampton way. The only problem was I had a proper nasty Peugeot 306 which I never dared park near the players’ sports cars.

‘I wasn’t being paid great money, the car was failing to pieces and all I could afford. The passenger window wouldn’t even stay up, I had to zip tie it to the inside door handle so it wouldn’t drop down.

‘Kanu asked whether I had music, when I replied there was Bob Marley, he was absolutely fine with it, sitting in the front seat with his knees up to his chin. While John was sat in the back.

‘We sat in silence, apart from the occasional directions, and I was so scared. The previous season, those two had combined to win the 2008 FA Cup for Pompey, now they were in my rust bucket of a car.

‘I was aged 25 and in my second job since leaving uni. Where on earth do you go from there in life? Such great, great days.’

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