THEY promised us blood and thunder, but instead we got thud and blunder. If Saturday's final was meant to encapsulate the romance of the FA Cup then Mills and Boon haven't got a lot to worry about.

Millwall enjoyed an open-top bus tour around south London yesterday despite going down 3-0 to Manchester United 24 hours earlier.

They enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame in Cardiff but, for the rest of us, Saturday's FA Cup final was just another addition to an ever-expanding list of lifeless let-downs.

Be honest, when was the last time you were left genuinely thrilled by an FA Cup final?

Michael Owen's late double to beat Arsenal in 2001 provided excitement, but it only served to mask what had been a thoroughly dull game up to that point.

The previous seven finals before that had seen only one side hit the target and you have to go back to Manchester United's 3-3 draw with Crystal Palace in 1990 to find a match that actually lived up to its billing as the biggest club game in the world.

Saturday's certainly didn't as Millwall's ground-breaking 9-0-1 formation kept Manchester United at bay for 44 minutes before three all-too-predictable goals resulted in the 3-0 scoreline that provided a fair reflection of the merits of the two sides.

At this juncture it's customary to describe Millwall as "plucky" and praise them for all the effort they put into the game.

Instead it would be better to use the phrase "lucky" given they that didn't have to beat a single Premiership side to make it to Cardiff.

It's all very well trying to keep things tight while the scores are level, but Millwall's failure to throw any more men forward when they were chasing the game smacked of a desperate lack of ambition.

Dennis Wise certainly didn't seem to lack ambition, although his one-man quest to become only the second man ever to be sent off in an FA Cup final somehow ended in failure.

Wise went down in FA Cup folklore when he took his son Henry up Wembley's famous steps to lift the trophy after Chelsea had beaten Aston Villa in 2000.

Given his display on Saturday, Wise might have been well advised to have given youngster his number shirt and sent him into battle against Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo stole the headlines after his eye-catching display lit up an otherwise drab affair, and the young winger provided a couple of moments that the BBC can dredge up for their "Memory Lane montage" before next year's event.

The first was his goal - a header after outjumping Wise.

The second was a mazy run that bore more than a passing resemblance to the moment when the controls stick on a football computer game and one of the players just goes round and round in circles at ridiculously high speed.

At least centre-half Darren Ward will have been pleased to see Ronaldo on the pitch as his two-toned fuzzy mop meant that his Waddle-esque mullet was only the second worst hairstyle on display.

Not that TV viewers saw too much of Ward's styling as the BBC cameras were far too interested in showing endless close-ups of the Millwall fans.

There must be a law somewhere that now dictates what TV companies are allowed to show at a football match.

If it's Newcastle it's got to be the fattest Geordie on display and if it's Brazil it's got to be two scantily-clad women. The BBC played their trump card early on Saturday - a woman crying before the national anthem had even been played - but made up for it with plenty of crowd close-ups.

"No-one likes us - we don't care", roared the Millwall fans.

Harsh, but true. Perhaps taking a shot at the Manchester United goal might have got a few more neutrals onto their side.