Traditions
When the Cup Final is held at Wembley Stadium, traditions include the "Eve of the Final" rally at the Russell Hotel, where the match officials are guests of honour at a meal provided for by the Referees' Association. Many members of the Association including serving referees also attend.
Speeches are made and the officials are presented with mementos of the occasion and invited to autograph their refereeing colleagues' Cup Final programmes. The referees usually sleep at White's Hotel, with FA protocol stating that they should not leave the grounds.
On the morning of the Cup Final, the officials take a pre-match walk through Hyde Park before travelling by limousine to Wembley. Once there they are obliged once more to autograph Cup Final programmes and are invited to join any VIPs in the banqueting hall.
Read more about this topic: FA Cup Final Referees
Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“Napoleon never wished to be justified. He killed his enemy according to Corsican traditions [le droit corse] and if he sometimes regretted his mistake, he never understood that it had been a crime.”
—Guillaume-Prosper, Baron De Barante (1782–1866)
“But generally speaking philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)