Northern hordes gatecrashed a London party

The 12th team were Queen's Park, from Glasgow, who were given byes all the way to the semi-final because of the cost of travelling. They drew with the Wanderers in the semi-final but could not afford to attend a replay and so withdrew.

Royal Engineers were strong favourites for the Final, which was played at The Oval in front of a crowd of 2,000 who each paid a shilling (five pence in new money). The Wanderers achieved a surprise victory, however, and so two other traditions were started - expensive tickets and Cup upsets.

This season, rather more than 12 teams entered the FA Cup. In fact a total of 602 clubs, more than ever before, have been involved and there are other impressive stats as well. More than two million punters have paid to go through the turnstiles to watch FA Cup ties, an increase of 12 per cent on the previous season and a total rebuttal of the suggestion that the FA Cup has lost its magic.

Saturday's Final will be watched on TV by 400 million people in 50 countries because football's oldest club knockout competition is still the best.

They started whittling down those 602 clubs way back on 26 August. That's right, a week into the League season and before the start of the new school year, the FA Cup kicked off with the extra preliminary round, and it is safe to assume that the clubs taking part did not honestly expect to be booking hotels in Cardiff this weekend.

But don't let anyone tell you that the early rounds are unimportant or unexciting. If you were to ask me to nominate the best FA Cup game I've ever been to, I'd obviously plump for one of the heart-stopping Finals or nail-biting semi-finals - but I'd also recall a teaslopping qualifying round.

That was when a club from what is now the Ryman League played a team from several layers higher up football's pyramid. The little team clawed their way into the lead but had to spend the rest of the game pinned in their own penalty area like the palefaces at Custer's last stand.

Their manager couldn't watch. He went into the dressing room and poured himself a calming cup of tea.

But he couldn't not watch either, and came back out and stood at the dressing room door, turning his head away when the opposition pressure became unbearable and not managing to take a single sip from his polystyrene cup. Eventually the cup disintegrated in his manic grip, spilling tepid tea all over the place. But his team held firm and the other Cup was enriched by one more small but stirring story.

Running through the pages of this commemorative supplement, you will find some of this season's stories because, as always, there were some epic adventures in the 11 rounds it has taken to get to Saturday's Cardiff climax.

But now the 602 have been reduced to two. The Londoners and the northern hordes.