They were the largest team of Crystal Palace ever.
Winners of an Epic FA Cup semi -final and losers in a classic final that would save the skin of Sir Alex Ferguson before they achieved a club record in third place the following season.
And before the Eagles of Oliver Glasner stand opposite Manchester City in the showpiece of Saturday, Men Sunsport three from Palace's Boys of 1990 – Andy Gray, John Salako and Richard Shaw – with assistant manager Alan Smith on the interface of Wembley Way and Memory Lane.
Salako and Shaw, the youngest members of the last All-Engels team to dispute an FA Cup final, are now 56, while Gray 61 is.
But put them together again and they talk again with wide eyes.
Those glory days only feel like yesterday, because they remember how a team is largely recruited from Non-League and lower League clubs, or promoted from the youth system, overthrown the powerful Liverpool and thus beat almost Ferguson's United.
Do you remember those 36-hour Booze Benders in the middle season in Tenerife? Or the long Caribbean tour after the final?
And what about the time that Gray has yielded a racism storm by training in an overcoat of sheepskin? Or when Smith was arrested halfway through the game in White Hart Lane as a suspected violation?
And how they celebrated that amazing 4-3 semi-final victory over Liverpool by eating a Chinese collection meal on a couch in Croydon, still their palace blazers.
“We had lost 9-0 in Anfield that season, one night that we actually played well,” says Gray.
“So there were no plans to celebrate the Semi winning, because we did not judge our chances,” said Salako, “was that the night when I got down on a sidewalk in Thornton Heath with my blazer?”
“No, that was another night,” Shaw replies.
“That was probably a usual Saturday evening,” Salako agrees.
This pair of palace youth products grew together, under the leadership of Smith, who manages the youth team, the reserves and later follow Steve Coppell as the boss of the first team.
Shaw and Salako, who were 21 when they played in the first grand finale of Palace, still lovingly refer to Smith as 'father'.
For Shaw, whose mother was a single parent, Smith was a real father figure.
Salako, a gifted winger who would play for England five times, was known as a church visitor.
When the semi -final of Palace against Liverpool was planned for a Sunday – a rarity, 35 years ago – a journalist from this newspaper asked him if he would put his Christian beliefs aside and play on the Sabbath.
“I liked to go to church on a Sunday,” says Salako.
“But only if you came home on time from the Blue Orchid (nightclub),” says Shaw.
“Direct from the Kebab shop to church,” agrees with Salako, “I am not really the most pious Christians.”
While the crazy gang of Wimbledon, who won the cup in 1988, were notorious, that palace team was cut from the same unmodent cloth.
These were players who came in the hard way, were never intimidated by reputation and were excellent at Dead-Ball Routines, decades in front specialized set-piece coaches.
“I think our characters were stronger than those of Wimbledon, not only physically but mentally,” says Gray.
“And we had better players,” agrees that Smith, “like (keeper) Nigel Martyn, signed for £ 1 million from Bristol Rovers, and Andy Thorn, by Wimbledon, who had a major influence.”
“We just weren't so pronounced about it,” says Salako, “but we were tough. I mean, Ian Wright would scrape your eyes.”
During that campaign of 1989-90, Palace's first since the promotion to the top flight, Coppell and Smith made the habit of flying to Tenerife on Saturday night with their players, with more drinking than training before they returned on Monday morning.
Yet Smith almost missed a journey when he felt his collar in White Hart Lane – thanks to Gray playing in an unknown position on the wing.
“Steve (Coppell) let me walk around to the other side of the field to give Andy some instructions.” Smith explains.
“There was a trench along the touchline, I immersed it there and everything you could see was my head and I shout at Andy.
“Suddenly we scored, I jumped out of the Geul and was arrested. I said:” I am the assistant manager and the police officer said: “You take the p *** degree.”
“He asked if I had an ID, I said,” I have my Palace Tracksuit with my initials on “.
“He guides me around his back and says:” We take you to Bow Street Police Station, “I said,” No, you're not, we're going to Tenerife tonight! “”
Die Tenerife trips, on which Alan Pardew – scorer of the semi -final winner of the Villa Park against Liverpool – was the social secretary, became legendary.
But the post-final trip to the Caribbean, laid by sponsors Virgin Atlantic, was two and a half weeks of pure hedonism.
“We went to the Cayman Islands and Trinidad, then Ocho Rios in Jamaica,” says Shaw.
“Yes, we played two games, but we were not at our best because we definitely had a face,” says Salako.
A year after the cup final, Palace chairman Ron Noades would cause great controversy by claiming that the black players of his club needed a few hard white men to wear them through the winter. “
But Gray, perhaps surprisingly, claims: “Ron was not a racist, Ron was an absolute blinder.”
And Shaw intervenes: “We know what has led to these comments.”
“Yes,” says Salako, “Andy always trained in an overcoat of sheepskin and it gave Ron the idea that Andy could not stand the cold.”
This was apparently a party piece by Grey's who, after himself, as' Brixton 'through and through' and lovingly is considered something of an eccentric loose channel by his former teammates.
Smith would rumble in gray training in his big coat, but Coppell – an expert man manager – insisted that if it made him happy, he would have to keep doing this.
Coppell, says Smith, would be positive about Palace's 'Non-League mentality'.
“That comrade, that chemistry,” says Salako.
Pardew was a glazier that was recruited from Yeovil for £ 4,000. Cup Final Hero Ian Wright was picked from Greenwich Borough.
Gray, after being released as a teenager by Palace, returned through Corinthian casuals and Dulwich Hamlet.
Yet Gray, who also played for Tottenham, Aston Villa and England, was an excellent attacking midfielder.
For all three former players, that outsider mentality still remains.
Shaw has spent a lot of his post-playing career coaching in Palace, Watford, Coventry, Millwall and, most recently, Cardiff.
Yet he is surprised that we have lunch at a chic golf club in Surrey, while Salako and Gray order fish and chips.
“We used to stop at a chippy after every match,” Smith recalls, “the team coach would go up and the kitman would go in and order 15 cod and chips.
“Dave West, our physio, once suggested that we should have pasta instead and Coppell threw a Wobbler and said” Stay with the base. “
After Liverpool was defeated, the construction of the Cup final was a dream for young people Salako and Shaw, who had been borrowed from Swansea and Hull respectively that season respectively.
“We are mounted for our suits with top man,” Shaw, “then we went to the Abbey Road Studios in our Shellsuits Palace and recorded 'smooth all -over' as the Cup final song.”
Gray, Pardew, Gary O'Reilly and Geoff Thomas would re-introduce the album cover of Beatles on the Zebra intersection outside the studio.
“On the day of the competition there were supporters everywhere, along the streets,” says Shaw, “We have watched this cup final structure on television as children and now we are part of one, on the coach with a TV camera.”
The game was a breathless 3-3 draw – O'Reilly Koppaleis in the front, before Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes played the game. And then Wright came.
The striker of Palace and Talisman had broken his leg only six weeks earlier, but made a wonderful recovery – according to Coppell, through the help of a healer who blew raspberries through gin, spoke directly to God and had previously helped to injure his strike partner Mark Bright or injury.
“Wrighty was like a rolled -up ferry, a bundle of energy,” says Salako.
He scored twice in a breakthrough performance for a player who would become Arsenal's record goalscorer of all time.
His second, early in extra time, came from a Salako cross.
“The goal that Jim Leighton's United career has ended,” Salako recalls, “I ran so far to celebrate with the Palace fans that I ended up with cramp.”
Hughes would make it equal before Ferguson had ruthless Leighton for the repetition, replaced him by the veteran Les Sealey, and United won a forgetful meeting with 1-0 through the goal of Lee Martin.
“After the repeat, I went to the United dressing room in the hope of exchange shirts,” says Salako, “Hughes, Robson, Steve Bruce and Co all dropped me off, they put their fingers up and said that I had to finish.”
Then Smith remembers how, when he led Palace to United in a FA Cup semi-final five years later, Ferguson told him: “I wouldn't be here if we didn't have that 3-3 draw.”
And then memories of other encounters come with Palace-Satisfies.
How Shaw was the player who received Eric Cantona for retribution, immediately for his notorious Kung-Fu-Kick on a palace fan in Selhurst Park.
How Salako was on the couch as a coach when Palace lost their only other FA Cup final to Louis van Gaal's United in 2016 – when Pardew did his famous 'Dad Dance' after Jason Puncheon scored the opening goal.
“Only Alan would do that,” Salako smiles, “I thought:” Wait, it's just 72 minutes, if we were not allowed to win the game first … “
And the memories continue, all the way through lunch. Salako has to go home, but Shaw says: “I loved this, I could have continued all night.”
They are now 56 and Gray is 61. But here, today, they are boys again. The boys from 1990. Palace's best and happy everywhere.