The Joy of Six: FA Cup final moments

1) The cream Armani suits, Liverpool 0-1 Man Utd, 1996
Flashy attire is commonplace in sport these days, but 12 years ago this was as shocking, infamous and public a faux pas as Nathan Barley's Geek Pie. At least Liverpool's Poulter guise added some spice to the usually interminable build-up: when Ray Stubbs interviewed the players before kick-off, his first question was not the comfortably inane, "Looking forward to it?" but, "Gentlemen, first of all, the suits?" When the teamsheet was revealed, you half expected a front pairing of Trinny & Susannah.

The culprit was David James, who had been modelling for Armani and arranged to have the team kitted out for the final, later claiming to the captain John Barnes that cream was the only colour available. To most, it proved you are what you wear, and aptly summed up the gaudy immaturity of the Spice Boys (although, as always, such conclusions were only drawn in hindsight). You had to feel sorry for the older players, though. Ian Rush looked as uncomfortable as at any time since his year in Italy. To him, you suspect, it was just like wearing a cream Armani suit.

Not all the Spice Boys were at ease, either. "I felt a bit of a knob in it," wrote Stan Collymore. "Razor (Ruddock) ripped the arms off his straight after the match. A designer suit with no arms: that was about as close to a symbol of that Liverpool team as you are ever going to get." Or, as Barnes put it, "When you do something like that, you'd better win." They didn't.

2) Keith Houchen's diving header, Coventry 3-2 Spurs, 1987
Just as some people are more familiar with Babylon Zoo than they are with Radiohead, many ultra-casual football fans will always remember the name Keith Houchen, the ultimate one-hit wonder, after his equaliser for Coventry in the 1987 final. Houchen's goal was so perfect that you could immediately close the book on 'greatest diving header of all time'. And in terms of goodwill, he will be living off the royalties for the rest of his life. 3) Gazza melts down, Spurs 2-1 Nottingham Forest, 1991
After a year of Gazzamania, we experienced the flip side: Gazza's mania. It is hard to imagine that any player has ever been so out of control on a football pitch. The two tackles he made - neither of which received a card from the genial referee Roger Milford - might both have interested the police, never mind Milford's top pocket. His intention was clearly to put down a marker by taking man and ball with bone-jarring force; instead he did so with cruciate-shredding force. His own cruciate. He was miles away on both occasions. With the first, he got the ball but raked his studs so far up Garry Parker's chest that he nearly got him in the throat. With the second, the ball running flat on the floor, he absolutely creamed Gary Charles halfway up the shin and, not unlike Tommy in Trainspotting lending his 'fitba' video to Renton, stepped on to the slipperiest of slopes by doing so.

It's easy to conclude that someone should have had a word with him, especially as he'd needed injections to calm him down in the build-up. But at the time it seemed like that higher state of consciousness was a necessary part of his irresistible act: two of his greatest performances in the previous year - against Czechoslovakia before the World Cup and against Arsenal in the semi-final - had been drawn from the same frenzy. In hindsight, the flip side was never likely to be far away.
4) Barry Davies's commentary, Everton 1-0 Man Utd, 1995
Commentary is such a rich part of football - try watching those videos or DVDs where it's obviously been added on after the event - and that extends to FA Cup finals: "And Smith must score ...", "And still Ricky Villa ..." and others have become almost as memorable as the incidents themselves. But you don't always need a memorable incident to provoke a memorable commentary. Take the 1995 final, when the normally immaculate Barry Davies went off on a surreal riff in which he announced that a series of players were "aptly named". All well and good with Sharpe and Keane, but by the time he got to Butt - something along the lines of "He joins things together, brings one sentence to an end and starts another" - it had entered official WTF territory. You half expected him to announce: "Amokachi, aptly named, always supplying the bombs up front, lalalala, hootenanny, who am I, are we all free, FRANNY LEE!" He didn't, alas, but it would remain the most memorable part of the short mid-90s spell in which Davies got to commentate on Big Finals. 5) Willie Young fouls Paul Allen, West Ham 1-0 Arsenal, 1980
This was football's equivalent of those queasiness-inducing scenes in films where the villainous adult punches the ingenuous teen in the breadbasket, or worse; when innocence is compromised to such an extent that it might never be recovered. Allen, at 17 years and 256 days the youngest player in an FA Cup final at Wembley, was set to put West Ham 2-0 up after slipping the last defender; he was 20 yards away from goal and homing in on Pat Jennings when Young unashamedly legged him up. In a sense it was yellow-bellied, but in those days Young knew he would only get a yellow card, even for this most professional of fouls. It didn't affect the result, as West Ham won 1-0, but it did deprive us of one of the FA Cup's more romantic stories. Or an even bigger anti-climax, when Allen's shot was swallowed up by Jennings.

6) The Anfield Rap, Liverpool 0-1 Wimbledon, 1988
Musical pioneers like the Beatles, the Prodigy and Portishead have nothing on Liverpool's 1987-88 squad. In a world where all football songs involved a lamentable Chas & Dave homage or, worse still, Chas & Dave themselves, this was revelatory. Obviously it was also desperate, desperate garbage: not so much a rap with a silent 'c' as a silent 'what the hell is this effing c'. And the video, particularly the bit where Steve Nicol tries to squat in Run DMC stylee but only serves to look like a man bearing the physical scars of years of constipation, was even worse. But at least they tried. And getting legendary commentator Brian Moore to join in was a stroke of genius.

It was written by Liverpool's Australian striker Craig Johnston, and his lyrics, combining the poetry of Dylan and the punch of Eminem, took in everything from unemployment (He gives us stick about the north-south divide/'cause they got the jobs, yeah, but we got the side), injustice (So come on Bobby Robson, he's the man/'cause if anyone can, Macca can), the cosmopolitan nature of Liverpool's squad (They don't talk like we do, do they do la/We'll have to learn 'em to talk propah), Bruce Grobbelaar's crippling insecurity (Don't call me a clown/Any more lip and you're going down) and, of course, the size of Johnston's johnson (I'm very big down under/But my wife disagrees). Thought-provoking stuff, to be sure, and infinitely more memorable than the Predator boots he created.