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A new chapter Bulldozers finally start pulling down WembleyPosted: Monday September 30, 2002 10:42 AMUpdated: Monday September 30, 2002 10:57 AM
LONDON (Reuters) -- Demolition experts finally began ripping the heart out of Wembley Stadium on Monday, turning one of the world's most famous sporting landmarks into a pile of dust and rubble. With a new stadium set to rise in time for the 2006 FA Cup final, the Twin Towers that have watched over so many of English football's greatest moments are being torn down and consigned to the history books. However, the replacement of a venue which cost 750,000 pounds to build in the early 1920s by one costing more than 750 million, is only the latest chapter in a Wembley story that is already 110 years old. An unremarkable patch of land northwest of London first made headlines in 1892 when the foundations were laid of what would later be known as "Watkins Folly" -- a steel tower designed to emulate, if not surpass, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Edward Watkin, chairman of London's Metropolitan's Railway, was ultimately to be disappointed as only the first stage was ever completed and within a few years of its 1896 opening, the tower had fallen into neglect, before later being demolished. From the ashes, the Empire Stadium rose nearly 20 years later as the centrepiece of the British Empire Exhibition, opened by King George V in 1924. Wembley Stadium had enjoyed a memorable opening in 1923 when it hosted Bolton Wanderers' 2-0 FA Cup final victory over West Ham United in what became known as the "White Horse Final." Crowd-puller Organisers had hopelessly underestimated the crowds who would flock to see the match and although the official attendance is given as 126,947, the true figure is probably closer to 200,000. The match only went ahead because of an early exercise in crowd control carried out almost single-handedly by policeman George Scorey and his white horse Billie, who drove the crowds back from the pitch and beyond the touchline. Among the many epic finals to have brought in the fans, the greatest was probably the "Matthews Final" of 1953 in which Stanley Matthews wreaked havoc down the right wing. His Blackpool team were 3-1 down to Bolton Wanderers with 22 minutes to go and trailing 3-2 with two minutes on the clock before roaring back for a thrilling 4-3 victory -- Stan Mortensen scoring a hat-trick. That same year, Wembley hosted probably England's most numbing defeat in their footballing history when they were outclassed by Ferenc Puskas' Hungary -- the "Marvelous Magyars" -- in a 6-3 defeat at Wembley. Thirteen years later, though, Wembley would host the greatest ever moment for English football, when the World Cup came to the country which invented the game. Wembley hosted England's group one games and their road to a victorious 4-2 final over West Germany in which Geoff Hurst's hat-trick and a Russian linesman helped to make history. Tofik Bakhramov won himself a place in English hearts when, asked by Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst whether a Hurst piledriver had crossed the line after it crashed off the underside of the bar, replied in the affirmative. It made the score 3-2 in extra time and Hurst put the result beyond doubt with an unstoppable strike that nearly burst the back of the West German net. German revenge The Germans got plenty of revenge in the ensuing years, in World Cups and European championships, including a 1-0 victory over England in the last football match to be played at Wembley Stadium, a World Cup qualifier in October 2000. It has taken almost two years of political and commercial wrangling for the final contracts to be signed for work on the demolition of the old and the building of the new to start. Though Wembley is synonymous with English football, the stadium has also witnessed other historic moments. When London hosted the 1948 Olympics, Wembley provided the cinder track on which Dutch housewife Fanny-Blankers Koen won four gold medals and Czech great Emil Zatopek announced his arrival on the world stage by winning the 10,000 metres. In 1963, British boxer Henry Cooper lost a memorable battle with the then Cassius Clay after initially felling the man who would later become Mohammed Ali -- and probably the greatest fighter of all time -- at a packed Wembley Stadium. Speedway, rugby league and greyhound racing were more regularly on the bill at Wembley, which was also a successful music venue -- notably with the Live Aid concert in 1985. On Monday, as the bulldozers got to work, Wembley began a four-year-long wait for its renaissance as one of the world's great sporting venues. From folly to football's home ground, Wembley is just getting ready for its next incarnation. Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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