Rebecca Lowe: Crystal Palace are my lifelong love. Winning the FA Cup would mean everything

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Over the last few weeks, I have dared to dream.

I’ve contemplated Marc Guehi, Crystal Palace’s captain, going up to the Royal Box at Wembley, sporting that wonderfully sheepish smile of his, and sharing a word with Prince William before he grasps the FA Cup and lifts it to the crowd. The noise. The sea of red and blue balloons. The tears. The unbridled joy. I’ve imagined it all.

To be honest, I’ve been struggling to think of much else.

Palace, my team, are in their third FA Cup final and only Manchester City — ‘only’, she says — stand between us and a first major trophy. Every Palace fan out there will have their own reason why this means so much. For me, it would be the culmination of a 36-year journey I’ve shared with my father. All those dreams and hopes would converge on one moment.

It would feel like completion.

Dad, a newsreader for the BBC, grew up in Caterham, a town near the M25 motorway that encircles London and prime Palace-supporting territory. We actually lived in Ealing, around 20 miles away in west London, but his allegiance never wavered and, while neither of us can remember quite how it happened, there we were in September 1989 watching Palace, then managed by the great Steve Coppell, playing Everton at Selhurst Park.

We had seats in the Arthur Wait Stand (it was dilapidated then and hasn’t really changed since) and, as a wide-eyed eight-year-old, I was hooked. I’d never witnessed anything like this.

My parents divorced when I was 10 and, overnight, those long drives across London to Palace came to represent quality time with my dad. They were precious.

We had a routine. We would leave early, 10.30am on a Saturday for a 3pm kick off, and park up a stone’s throw from the ground on one of the roads that climb up from Whitehorse Lane, which backs onto the stadium. I dreamt of living in one of those houses; I’m based in California now, but I still think about that road. I’d peer in through the windows, cursing how lucky the occupants were to live this close to Palace, then on past the chip shop on the corner to the club store.

Dad would treat me to a key ring or a shirt, buy the matchday programme, and then it was up the steps to Crystals — a dingy nightclub turned function room above the Sainsbury’s supermarket at one end of the ground — to be first in the door when it opened at midday.

What a place that was. All sticky floors, brown mottled tables and nasty padded chairs. God knows what had seeped into those over the years, but we couldn’t care less. We’d order sausage, chips and beans twice — still the best pre-match meal I’ve ever had — and Dad would buy me a Coke (I was never allowed Coke) and he’d have a pint of London Pride beer.

We would digest every word of the programme while we ate, and watch the raffle. Sometimes I’d take myself off to the ladies’ because there was a window from where you could see the green of the pitch. I’d just stand there, staring: ‘Wow, what a view’. I was completely enthralled by everything Crystal Palace. It was my happy place.

Then, at around 2.15pm, we’d amble over to the Holmesdale Stand at the other end of the ground where Dad had season tickets: upper tier behind the goal. We’d watch the game, soak it all up, then drive home listening to the 606 fans’ phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live. Those were some of the best days of my life.

Ian Wright scores his second goal for Palace at Wembley in 1990 — a lead they surrendered seven minutes from the end (PA Images via Getty Images)

I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, but being a girl obsessed with football was an anomaly. As a teenager, I had a few friends who were Manchester United fans, mainly because they were David Beckham fans, but no one who actually went to football matches. But those trips were the focus of my fortnight. And Palace was everything.

Those players were my heroes, up there with Take That, the boy band whose posters adorned my bedroom wall. Geoff Thomas, Ian Wright, Nigel Martyn, Gareth Southgate, Marc Edworthy… I used to write to our old midfielder Alan Pardew — he never wrote back — and I still get a little pang of disbelief whenever Mark Bright, one of our greatest strikers, messages me now. I named my goldfish “Coppell” and, at 14, I chased one of our players, Simon Rodger, who was on crutches recovering from a broken leg, across the car park at Aston Villa, hoping to get his autograph.

We’d been having a picnic at the car before the FA Cup semi-final in 1995 and I didn’t have a piece of paper, so my dad emptied a wine bottle and I presented that to Simon to sign. He must have thought I was such a weirdo.

I kept that bottle for years in a wardrobe at my mum’s house, only for her cleaner to discover it and deposit it in the recycling. Two decades later, my friends at Men In Blazers tracked Rodger down — he was working as a chauffeur in Bognor Regis — and sent him a bottle of champagne, which he signed for me. I still have it to this day.

These are the players who decorated my formative years, who I would watch from our seats behind the goal. Of course things changed as I ventured into journalism and found myself next to the players I had idolised with a microphone in hand and a game to analyse. But my affinity for the club remained.

The last game I saw Palace play live was the 2013 Championship promotion play-off final against Watford. I had just taken the job at NBC in the United States, covering the Premier League, and seeing the team go up just felt like the next stage of the rollercoaster, a high to be cherished for as long as it lasted.

I turned to my dad at the final whistle and said: “Well, this is fun. It means I’m going to have Palace in the Premier League for the first year in my new role at NBC.” We’d only last a year because we only ever lasted a year!

Twelve years later, they are still there. And now I might see them make history.

Lowe with her father, Chris, at the 2013 Championship play-off final (Rebecca Lowe)

I left it about 10 minutes after the final whistle of Palace’s 3-0 semi-final win over Aston Villa last month to call my boss at NBC, Pierre Moossa.

Games may have been moved from the Saturday, but this is still a Premier League weekend and there’s a show to roll out. Even so, I had to make my pitch to be at Wembley. I’d been practising what I was going to say for a while.

I’d missed out on Palace’s first FA Cup final in 1990 because I was too young and watched us concede an equaliser to Manchester United seven minutes from the end of extra time on the television; the pain was gut-wrenching. We lost the replay 1-0 a few days later.

I couldn’t fly back for our next appearance in 2016, also against United, because I’d just given birth to my son, Teddy, and was nursing a three-week-old baby. I dressed him up in a Palace baby-grow and watched from home instead. This time, we were 12 minutes away from glory; again, it was snatched away.

So this was my chance and, when Pierre picked up, I launched into my spiel. I explained about the two previous occasions. I could travel out late on the Friday, perhaps, and there was a flight back at 8pm on Saturday to New York, so we could do Sunday’s show from there. I wasn’t worried about a lack of sleep. I just needed to be at Wembley.

He interrupted me mid-flow: “Rebecca, you’re fine. You’re going.”

I could honestly cry. I was so grateful. He just gets it. So I’m lucky enough to be a guest of the Premier League at the final, and I’m taking Teddy and my husband, Paul, to see the Palace.

This is a pilgrimage. A return to Wembley, the stadium I could see from our house growing up and a ground I’ve been to many times since to present pitchside. But Palace being there makes it different. I’ve been struggling to sleep. I can’t think about anything else. It churns my stomach up imagining us winning, of what it would mean for my dad, the chairman Steve Parish and everyone who has worked at the club for so long. But I’m scared of the pain if things don’t go our way.

Jason Puncheon celebrates Palace’s goal in the 2016 final, a lead that was cancelled out nine minutes from time (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

Above all, though, I’m proud. Proud of the club and the fans. Proud to be a Palace fan and to support a club where this means something.

Sir Alex Ferguson always used to say at Manchester United that, if you can’t win the league, just win something every year just to tick along, and that’s very much what City are trying to do after what’s been a terrible season by their recent standards.

But this is life-changing for Palace. This is a line in the sand moment in people’s lives. It isn’t just ticking on. It is everything.

All those years of relegations, the administrations when we feared the club might disappear entirely, the mid-table mediocrity in the Championship, or even watching players leave for bigger and better things: this would make all that worthwhile.

I can’t imagine what life is like as a City or Liverpool fan. Or even a Chelsea, Arsenal or, dare I say it, Manchester United supporter. They’re in the same game as me, but their lives are completely different. And I’d rather have what I have because, when that joy comes — please, God, let it come — it’s more elevated. If Palace win on Saturday, it’ll be one of the top three days of my life, behind the birth of my boy and my wedding day. You can’t say that if you support a team who have won so many trophies.

I would always take quality over quantity.

So I’m travelling 6,000 miles to watch them, but I’d travel 26,000 miles, 126,000 miles. This is everything and I’m so proud to share that hope and love for something that’s been a thread in my life for as long as I can remember.

(Top photos: Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images; Rebecca Lowe)

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