One Hundred Years of Breaking in: The Wembley Way

Jack Curson

The 11th of July 2021 saw the England men’s football team play its first major final for over half a century, in a hugely anticipated game against Italy in the final of the Euros. Wembley had hosted the fabled World Cup final of 1966 which saw England record a famous 4-2 victory against West Germany, but 55 years on it was England’s turn to face misery, with the country’s hopes for a second major trophy dashed as Italy won 3-2 on penalties, following a nervous 1-1 stalemate after 120 minutes.

If football’s failure to come home wasn’t enough of a disappointment, the international image of England and its football fans was done no favours on Euro 2020 final day. Grimly, but entirely predictably, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, the 3  young black players who missed their spot kicks in the final, were subject to swathes of racist abuse on social media. Whilst only representing a small minority of English fans and society, reflected by the vast swathes of vocal support the 3 players received from the public in the days following the final, the dark days of overt racism in English football was shown to be rearing its ugly head once more.

The public shows its support for Marcus Rashford at his mural in Manchester, after it was defaced following his penalty miss.

Even before a ball had been kicked, the attention of the international media had been diverted away from the upcoming fixture towards the chaotic scenes just outside Wembley stadium. Once the turnstiles were opened a few hours before the match’s 8pm kick-off, successive swarms of ticketless fans, many fuelled by a day of alcohol drinking and cocaine sniffing, made a break to get into the ground. Knowing that around 25,000 of Wembley’s 90,000 seats would be vacant as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, and with a desire to see the biggest fixture in England since 1966, over 2000 ticketless fans were able to break into Wembley. Targeting emergency fire doors and disabled entrances, there were 17 major breaches from 90 minutes before kick-off right through until the penalty shootout.

Whilst the idea of trying your luck to get the chance to see what was set to be a historic game might not seem shameful on the face of it, the scenes which accompanied the break in were dangerous and violent in nature. Before getting through the turnstiles at Wembley, many ticketless fans punched and kicked their way through the groups of stewards that were manning the various layers of security around the ground. In amongst the chaos, there were many bystanders put at serious risk. For example, one man was knocked over and trampled by an onrushing crowd of ticketless fans breaking through the Spanish steps entry into the Wembley compound, and whilst he was eventually able to escape the crush, he quickly collapsed and went into a seizure. These chaotic scenes, as well as the subsequent racist abuse of black English footballers, drew the attention of onlookers the world over away from the exciting young English team, a team which represents the very best of the country’s diversity and character, towards the darker side of English football and society.

Intriguingly, almost exactly a century before the chaos of the Euro 2020 final, Wembley was again the site at which ticketless fans tried their luck to get sight of a major final. Before it got its reputation as the spiritual home of English football, and indeed one of the most renowned football stadiums in the entire world, the newly-built Wembley hosted the 1923 FA Cup final. Just like in 2021, thousands of fans broke into the recently opened ground to get the chance to see that year’s FA cup final, then far and away the most important fixture of the English football calendar. Comparing these two events paints an interesting picture of continuity and change in England’s national game.

England’s Fall and Wembley’s Rise

Whilst Wembley is now unquestionably an icon of English football, in reality the stadium’s origins had nothing to do with football. Following the brutal bloodshed and geopolitical machinations of World War One, Britain’s dominance on the international stage was faltering, with its empire fading and the United States continuing its meteoric global rise. In an attempt to bolster Britain’s international image and promote the newly conceived commonwealth of nations, the British Empire Exhibition was to be held in 1924, the aim of which was to showcase Britain’s greatness as well as strengthen bonds and stimulate trade with its dominions. The architectural centre piece of the exhibition was to be a freshly-built stadium named the Empire Stadium, which would host sporting events, military demonstrations and pageants.

One of Wembley's iconic twin towers under construction

The Empire Stadium, which was built in the then north-west suburb of Wembley, had been conceived as a short term installation, which would be demolished following the conclusion of the British Empire Exhibition. However, the plan for the new stadium, and indeed the history of England’s national game, would be changed as a result of a request from the FA. The FA Cup final was the centrepiece of the English football, but having struggled with ill-suited stadiums following the end of World War One, the FA saw this new stadium as having the potential to be the kind of stadium fit to host its showpiece event. A 21-year contract was agreed and the stadium’s construction began. Incredibly, it took only 300 days for the project to be completed on the 23rd of April 1923, just 5 days before the 48th incarnation of the FA Cup final. Made-up of 25,000 tonnes of concrete and 14,000 tonnes of structural steelwork, the stadium was designed to hold 125,000 people, 23,000 of whom would be seated. The stadium cost an estimated £800,000, which adjusted for inflation would be the equivalent of £46 million today, or just over half of what Manchester United paid for Harry Maguire in 2019.

Match Day

King George V watches on as the chaos unfolds

Despite the stadium’s capacity of 125,000, on the morning of the 28th of April 1923, a crowd of at least 250,000 people converged on Wembley Park. With Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United’s teams made up of good players but hardly household names, it was the pull of seeing the first match at London’s new behemoth stadium which drew the masses to Wembley on match day. Morning newspapers had suggested that around 5000 fans travelling south from Bolton would be joined by an additional 115,000 fans from London and the surrounding areas. However, at 1:45, over an hour before the game was set to kick off at 3pm, the gates to enter the ground were shut after all the tickets were sold, despite large crowds continuing to flow into Wembley Park and massing outside the stadium’s gates.

With no more tickets available, large numbers of the ticketless crowd proceeded to climb the gates to get a sight of the first FA Cup final at the majestic new stadium. It’s estimated that an additional 100,000 people broke into the stadium this way. Over 240,000 underground tickets to Wembley Park were sold on the day, whilst thousands of people were able to get to Wembley via bus or on foot from central London. Having got into the stadium and being unable to find space in the stands, large numbers of the ticketless fans spilled out onto the pitch, which was full of spectators as kick-off approached. Archive video footage shows other ticketless fans climbing drainpipes and scaffolding to gain a view of the pitch from the roof of the stands.

With around double the ground’s official capacity inside Wembley, there was pandemonium. With thousands of fans on the pitch, the official kick-off time of 3 pm was missed. As it became apparent that the game couldn’t be played whilst the pitch was packed with people, some of the ticketless fans left the ground. Newly arrived mounted police were able to create some semblance of order amongst those that remained, who were instructed to join hands and push back step by step until they reached the touchline, at which point they sat down on the pitch’s outer perimeter. Finally, some 40 minutes after the scheduled kick off time, the 1923 FA Cup final was able to begin.

Given the context, this FA cup final was inevitably like no other. The first half lasted over an hour due to regular stoppages being caused by sections of supporters being forced onto the pitch, one of which forced the mounted police to return to the pitch in the 11th minute. Throughout the game, the referee allowed play to continue if the ball bounced off the fans, with throw-ins only given if the ball went over the top of the surrounding fans. The conditions also created unique difficulties for wide players in particular, with one attendee recalling that, ‘I saw the wing man dashing down the wing and all of a sudden there is a foot stuck out and he goes head long… God knows how many occasions going around that touchline it happened’.

With Bolton taking the lead in just the second minute in what in reality was a farcical match, the West Ham players did attempt to put the unique conditions to their advantage. For Bolton’s second goal, the referee saw through the Hammers’ claims that the ball had struck the post rather than being propelled back by supporters in the goalmouth, whilst the West Ham captain George Kay also asked for the referee to have the game abandoned with the score at 2-0. Unsurprisingly, Bolton captain Joe Smith said he and his team would ‘play until dark to finish the match if necessary’. The game would end up finishing 2-0, with the victorious Bolton players having to battle through another pitch invasion to reach the Royal Box to be handed the trophy by the king.

Changing Times and a Changing Game

Bolton players, including the match's first goalscorer and future transfer record breaker David Jack on the right, go onto the pitch to survey the situation

Clearly, football today is an entirely different beast to football in the 1920s. There’s still eleven players on either side, but it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that’s just about where the similarities end. Football clubs, and in many cases even players, are as much international brands as they are competitors, with the insatiable growth of football as a business being matched with a never-ending development of player’s technical capabilities and manager’s tactical ingenuity. Take the case of David Jack, the scorer of the first goal of the 1923 FA Cup final. Jack made history as the first player to be transferred for over £10,000 when he moved to Arsenal in 1928 for £10,647 and 10 shillings. Adjusted for inflation, today that equals around £750,000 - a drop in the ocean compared to Neymar’s record £200 million transfer to Paris Saint-Germain. Moreover, when the pitch was filled with spectators in 1923, the players of each team were able to casually come out onto the pitch and shake hands with the excited fans. A similar scene at Euro 2021, with the players being international superstars and multi-millionaires rather than largely local heroes earning relatively unimpressive wages, would be bedlam. The scale of football, in so many ways, is fundamentally different to the time of the first Wembley FA cup final.

The camera in a hammer

Comparing the two crowd invasions reveals a number of similarities and differences, which together give a snapshot of the change and continuity that occurred during the 100 years separating the two events. Given the contemporary ubiquity of smart phones and the presence of the world’s media surrounding one of the most coveted games in football, it’s unsurprising that the events around the Euro 2020 final are well documented. Netflix produced its own documentary The Final: Attack on Wembley, which collates much of the footage captured by fans and media alike. However, thanks to the official coverage of the 1923 final, as well as the shots captured by an unofficial cameraman who posed as a West Ham fan and used a camera disguised as a hammer to covertly capture the events unfolding outside of the stadium, we’re also still able to see footage of the 1923 FA Cup final, which is available on YouTube from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4NqYsFTr1Q.

The first obvious difference is the look of the crowds. The 1923 footage shows that the swarms of fans entering the stadium were almost all white men dressed smartly in suits, ties and hats. Whilst the gender diversity of football crowds is a positive feature of modern day football more broadly, those that broke into the Euro 2020 final were also largely men, but men from diverse racial backgrounds and often sporting replicas of the England football top. Clearly Britain is a more diverse country which takes a more relaxed approach to dressing, but the numbers of fans wearing replica tops also points towards the commercialisation of football, with sales of (far from cheap) football tops being just one small embodiment of the way in which football fans have become consumers as much as supporters.

Another difference between 1923 and 2021 is the force, and in many cases violence, which the ticketless fans used when breaking into Wembley. Contemporary analysis of both 1923 and 2021 drew attention towards poor organisation by the authorities and ill-preparedness of stewards, but looking at both pieces of footage shows the contrasting behaviour of the two sets of fans. Whilst the ticketless fans in 1923 faced relatively little resistance from security, footage shows none of the drug and alcohol fuelled aggression and violence of the 2021 stormers. Many witnesses that were interviewed made reference to the good nature of the fans in 1923, whilst a significant factor in ensuring the relative of the safety of the crowds was the positive behaviour of fans. In contrast many of the ticketless fans at Euro 2020 violently broke through layers of security, whilst another large wave of potential stormers stood outside the stadium until Italy eventually won on penalties, ready to rush a substantial cordon of police and security that were guarding entry to the Wembley compound in the event of an English victory.

Clearly, part of the reason for the presence of violence in 2021 was the drug taking and binge drinking which has become a subset of British football culture, one which wasn’t around in 1923. More fundamentally though, the sheer level of security, whilst clearly not enough to repel the onrushing fans, necessitated more force and violence for the ticketless supporters to break in to the ground. Naturally, the more the expensive a ticket and the more exclusive an event, the more sophisticated the security. In this sense the force and violence used by the 2021 stormers can be seen as a more obscure symptom of the way football has changed. Specifically, it reveals the way in which big games like the Euros final have become exclusive affairs of global significance, for which tickets are limited in quantity and extortionate in price, prompting some to turn to force and violence to gain access.

Whilst there were injuries in both 1923 and 2021, due to the sheer scale of the invasion in 1923 the casualties were greater, with police helping to treat close to 1000 people, many of whom subsequently had to be hospitalised. One fan in attendance, Terry Hickey, said on being in the packed crowd that ‘I thought it was my lot… I couldn’t see myself getting out.’ In contrast, thanks the to the lesser number of ticketless fans in 2021 along with the fact that there were around 25,000 empty seats due to COVID-19 restrictions, injuries were more localised to the entrances which were targeted by the stampeding ticketless fans. Overall, given the infamous Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 and the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, it’s fairly remarkable that there were no deaths in 1923. Crucially, it was the absence of barriers preventing fans from getting onto the pitch which saved a great many lives. Another fan present on the day, Sydney Woodhouse, recalled that ‘had there not been free access to the pitch from the bottom of the terraces, the casualties would have been colossal… Otherwise I think hundreds would have been crushed’. It may have postponed kick-off and led to somewhat of a farcical cup final, but the invasion of the pitch likely saved a great many lives.

Pele walking in front of the Wembley crowd

Despite the various differences, emblematic of the progress (and in some cases regress) that English football has gone through over the century dividing the two games, the fundamental truths at the core of the two break-ins was that of excited fans wanting to get inside Wembley and watch a game of football. In 1923 Wembley was a novel new structure, impressive in its incredible scale and bold design. In 2021, Wembley is now the unquestionable home of English football, a meaning and status that was absent a century earlier. Pele, the eternal football icon, said of Wembley: ‘It is the cathedral of football. It is the capital of football and it is the heart of football’. Football will continue to change in disparate ways both positive and negative for football fans and players alike, but the passion for the nation’s game and the preeminence of Wembley will remain, unyielding.