THE first time is always the best, so they reckon, and it has to be said, it was memorable. The match was a bit special, too.

It was the 1971 FA Cup final. She was the daughter of the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, they were the mighty Arsenal and we were sitting together almost level with the lank-haired Charlie George when he fired an incandescent winner from 22 yards, flung himself prostrate to the ground and awaited rapturous resuscitation.

We'd beaten Liverpool, won the double, and the earth moved to the tune of Rule Britannia.

Principally with the Gunners, latterly with the Northern League, there have been many subsequent Wembley occasions and the thrill of it has scarcely diminished.

There was the 1980 Cup final when somehow we contrived to let Trevor Brooking score with a header and I didn't utter a word (so it's said) all night; the final against Manchester United the previous season in which the last five minutes produced three goals and eternal memories; the 1998 final against Newcastle United after which Magpie fans displayed such remarkable dignity, or supine resignation, or both.

They will know, at any rate, that the Gunners' 1979 triumph over Man United was the last time that Sunderland scored in a Cup final; probably they don't know that after that match I flew an Arsenal balloon all the way back to Northallerton, where someone burst it with his tab end.

Until 1996-97, which by great good fortune was the year that I became its chairman, the Northern League hadn't had a team at Wembley since the well heeled Amateur Cup days, North Shields in 1969.

That first season Whitby Town, Sea-Sea-Seasiders, won the FA Carlsberg Vase. No matter that Wembley refused to let me sell Northern League magazines at 30p a time on the ludicrous pretext that it might affect their extortionate programme; no matter that the League management committee member sitting next to me wondered why Whitby were called the Teessiders when they played in North Yorkshire - the delirious way in which I dribbled a paper cup from twin tower to Wembley Park Underground was wizardry indeed.

Also there that day, the other side of the gangway, was a pony-tailed chap in a sweltering overcoat who proved to be Brooks Mileson, former sub-four minute miler and chairman of Albany Group Holdings. At kick off the League hadn't a sponsor, by 4pm we had. Brooks and his boys have been magnificent.

Tow Law Town reached Wembley the following year, Bedlington Terriers the season after that. The sun shone; at Wembley it always does.

There was also the occasion in 1981 when Bewley junior school from Billingham reached the Smith's Crisps final and I got onto the pitch by pretending to be a photographer - some would say I still do - the time in the banqueting suite when my briefcase (which again contained League magazines) was taken to a bomb-proof bunker for fear that it might explode; the unforgettable afternoon on which Premiership referee Jeff Winter bought the beers, though there were many more on which the order was reversed.

Like everything else, of course, the beers are scandalously overpriced. The outside catering amounts to highway robbery and culinary catastrophe, the programmes become more exorbitant every season, the toilets belong to an earlier age, the views from behind the goal are telescopic, the public address system often inaudible and the public relations always ineffable.

It is almost an irrelevance. There cannot be a true football fan for whom every trip to Wembley, every tight-jammed Tube from Baker Street, remains a special and a skin-tingling experience.

Like the slum clearance families from the 1960s who found themselves with mod cons and longed to be back home, there will be few who won't wonder this morning if the old place can ever be the same.

We must reserve judgement on the lustrous new Wembley. One thing's for certain, though, there'll only ever be one Charlie George.

Wembley memories: see Sport page 2