A Trip Home : Fans of English Soccer Gather to Watch Their Sport’s Big Event

Long before 7 a.m. Saturday, the smell of scrambled eggs and English sausage wafted through the British and Dominion Club, stirring hunger in the empty stomachs of sleepy soccer fans.

Martin Brown took in the ambience and lifted a strong, dark brew to his lips.

Guinness stout. “It’s the only day of the year I’d be caught drinking at 6:15 in the morning,” said Brown, who crawled out of bed Saturday, donned a kelly green soccer jersey and drove in from Alhambra to find a seat in a pub crowded with about 200 other British expatriates and soccer fans, all intent on seeing the English sporting event of the year--the F.A. Cup final.

Forget breakfast at Wimbledon. This was breakfast at Wembley Stadium, where passion replaces decorum and patrons cheer on their favorite with pints and sausages, not berries and cups of tea.

“It’s equivalent to the Super Bowl. That’s the obvious analogy,” said Brown, who grew up in Plymouth, England, but has lived in this country since 1979. He hasn’t missed a Football Assn. Cup final yet. “I still watch it every year, absolutely.”

The same scene was played out in British enclaves across Orange County, from the Rose and Crown in Anaheim to the Fox and Firkin in Newport Beach. Any pub that purchased the pay-per-view satellite feed of the 7 a.m. game could expect to do a bang-up breakfast business.

These are passionate fans, not to be confused with rowdy ones. They cheered good shots roundly and sighed with relief after big saves. Between, they studied the action far more attentively than the typical Super Bowl or World Series fan.

“I don’t like the word fanatic; it seems to indicate mental illness,” Brown said. “I am jolly keen on football, but I do have other things in my life.”

Surprisingly, English soccer--still football to them--remains mostly the province of men.

Mandy Coble had to plead with Daron Foley to bring her along.

“Come on, let me go,” Coble said.

“But it’s a lads’ thing,” Foley said, just before he agreed.

This year’s game matched Arsenal, a traditional power from London that has appeared in 12 Cup finals--more than any other team--with Sheffield Wednesday, a team from the industrial north that hadn’t played in a Cup final since 1966. The final has been contested for 112 years.

Foley, who grew up in England but lives in Huntington Beach, has been an Arsenal fan since he was a boy.

“I wouldn’t wake up at 7 in the morning to watch just any team,” he said.

Brown, who sat two seats away, used to play soccer in the parks of Plymouth with Sheffield Wednesday Manager Trevor Francis when both were youngsters.

“I don’t like Arsenal,” Brown said. “I just think they’re boring, and not very creative. But they are a very tough team.”

Foley took the bait, and turned to Brown for friendly banter.

“Results,” he said, simply.

Arsenal has won five F.A. Cups, and earlier this season beat Sheffield Wednesday, 2-1, in the League Cup final.

Sheffield Wednesday proved to be the favorite Saturday at the British and Dominion Club, perhaps out of anti-London sentiment or affection for the underdog.

When Arsenal’s star, Ian Wright, angled in a header past Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Chris Woods for a 1-0 lead, the cheering was surprisingly subdued.

“Early setback,” Brown said.

It wasn’t until the 61st minute that Sheffield Wednesday tied the score to a rousing cheer. It was done with the help of John Harkes--the first American to play in an F.A. Cup final.

Harkes assisted on the tying goal, heading the ball toward David Hirst, who beat goalkeeper David Seaman with a sliding left-footed shot from six yards.

Harkes, a member of the U.S. national team from Kearny, N.J., had a good share of supporters in the crowd, but he was also an easy mark.

“That was the American guy,” Brown said when a shot by Harkes sailed high.

“He was trying to get it through the uprights,” Foley teased.

Brown laughed.

“He was going for the extra point,” Brown said.

The crowd at the Rose and Crown in Anaheim was also noticeably pro-Sheffield, with many wearing the team’s colors, blue and white.

Perhaps the person with the best reason for such allegiance was Jim Hinch, who played for Sheffield Wednesday in the ‘70s. Soccer brought him to Orange County; he was a starting forward for the California Surf in the North American Soccer League in 1980 and stayed on, now owning a mortgage company.

Hinch is also president of the Orange County branch of the British-American Chamber of Commerce, an organization that promotes commerce between American and European business interests, and whose members filled a dining room Saturday at the Rose and Crown.

“The Cup Final is the epitome of the game,” said Hinch, who was joined by fellow former Surf players Paul Cahill and Peter Wall. “Winning the league may mean more prestige, but this is the game that’s being watched throughout the world today.”

Fans of English soccer often have a difficult time trying to keep up with the happenings on the other side of the Atlantic.

Gary Thackham, who lives in Orange and watched the game at the Fox and Firkin, is so passionate about the game that last week he distributed the inaugural issue of “For the Love of Soccer,” a publication dedicated to bringing local fans news from places where soccer isn’t an afterthought.

His first issue included lineups for Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday, and an essay on the F.A. Cup.

“For British people living abroad,” he wrote, “it is a time to remember your friends and family back home huddled around the ‘tele’ in their living rooms, a reminder of where you come from and what can still bring a tear to your eye.”

Truth be told, though, many of the expatriates living in Orange County don’t want to go back. Homesick?

“Not really,” Coble said. “We just think of the weather. Today is a nice day there. They’re in short sleeves. It’s probably 55. That’s cold .”

Some, it’s true, no longer even care for English sausages--bangers, as they’re known.

“They’re horrible,” Coble said.

“You have to eat something to soak this up,” Brown said with a shrug and a glance at the pint in front of him.

Two 45-minute halves after the F.A. Cup final began, nothing was decided. The score was tied, 1-1, at the end of regulation.

“You would call this overtime,” said Barry Dwyer, a Lakewood resident who was cheering for Arsenal and is originally from Wimbledon. “We call it extra time. We don’t need this. If they can’t win it in the first 90 minutes, they shouldn’t be out there.”

The rules call for two 15-minute overtimes. Thirty minutes later, nothing had changed. After 120 minutes of soccer, there was no winner.

Unlike the Super Bowl, the World Series or the NBA Finals, the F.A. Cup is allowed to end in a tie, without penalty shots to decide it.

The rules call for a replay of the entire game, set for Thursday. As time ran out, the fans at the British and Dominion Club threw their arms in the air in exasperation, as well as relief. Nobody had lost yet.

Imagine, if the Super Bowl ended in a 24-24 tie, and the rules called for them to play the game all over again in a few days.

“I’d like to have won today,” Foley said. “Now I’ll have to wait till Thursday.”

Reason enough to do it all again.

Staff Writer Van Nightingale contributed to this story.