Today: Headlines from 24 April 1925

100 Years Ago Today — Football Fever Sweeps Wembley

Every morning in 2025, our phones ping before the coffee is even poured. A century ago the news moved at the pace of rattling telegraph keys and evening extras, yet some days still crackled with electric anticipation. 24 April 1925 was one of them. Britain woke up to a single, consuming headline: tomorrow’s F.A. Cup Final.

Sheffield United vs Cardiff City: The Battle for the Cup

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• By Friday afternoon special excursion trains were already growling toward London, their open carriages packed with red-and-white stripes from the steel city and the bluebird banners of South Wales.
• Ticket touts prowled outside Wembley’s young concrete arch, asking up to five shillings for seats that cost eighteen pence at the box office.
• The brand-new Daventry 5XX long-wave transmitter stood ready to relay running commentary across the whole of the British Isles—a technological marvel for 1925 and the first time many villages in Scotland and Ireland would hear a Cup Final live.

Saturday, 25 April, delivered the drama: a cagey match decided by Fred Tunstall’s 30-minute strike, Sheffield United 1 – Cardiff City 0. The press called it “plain, solid Yorkshire football,” but for the 91,000 inside Wembley it felt like the future arriving at full volume, courtesy of mass radio.

2025 Perspective

In an era of 8K holographic replays beamed to smart glasses, it is almost quaint to picture families clustering round walnut-cased wireless sets, twisting dials until the crackle turned into the roar of Wembley. Yet the emotions—tribal pride, the gasp before a shot, the collective cheer—remain gloriously unchanged a hundred years on.