Wembley Stadium opened with the chaotic 'White Horse' FA Cup Final
On this day · 28 April 1923
On April 28, 1923, Wembley's first FA Cup Final drew a crowd so vast that mounted police, led by one white horse, had to clear the pitch.
When the original Wembley Stadium threw open its turnstiles on April 28, 1923, for its first FA Cup Final, between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, nobody had planned for what arrived. The new stadium, finished only days earlier, was swamped as a crowd far beyond its capacity poured in, spilling onto the terraces and then onto the pitch itself.
For a time it looked as though the match could not be played at all. Mounted police moved in to push the masses back, and one officer, PC George Scorey, on a pale grey horse named Billy, became the enduring image of the day. Photographed against the dark mass of spectators, the horse looked white, and the fixture has been the ‘White Horse Final’ ever since.
Kick-off was delayed roughly 45 minutes while police edged the crowd off the grass.
Bolton won 2-0. The crush, with estimates of attendance soaring past 200,000, prompted debate in Parliament and ushered in modern crowd-safety measures for future finals.
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