FA Cup Final: Richard Williams witnessed the most compelling climax to the FA Cup competition in recent memory.

Whether it was the sight of the two sets of fans playing impromptu games of football together in the streets around the stadium before making their way inside, or the whipcrack of noise that greeted the announcement of each West Ham player's name during the pre-match build-up, Saturday's FA Cup final promised something special. And at the end of a long and unusually gruelling season, in which the majority of Premiership clubs found themselves competing for something or other right into May, the players of Liverpool and West Ham United reached deep into their reserves of physical and mental stamina to produce the tournament's most compelling climax in recent memory.

Although far from the greatest match in purely technical terms, the 125th final was nevertheless a contest reaching the highest levels in other respects, a battle between near-equals that not even the essentially unsatisfying nature of a penalty shoot-out could diminish. And now, thanks to two right-footed drives of withering power and an overall performance of implacable authority, Steven Gerrard will join the list of those, including Stanley Matthews, Bert Trautmann, Jim Montgomery, Alan Sunderland and Ricardo Villa, whose names are forever associated with the trophy.

There had been a danger that this final would be overshadowed by Arsenal's meeting with Barcelona this week and by next month's festival of football in Germany, on which so many English hopes rest. Refusing to play second fiddle, however, Saturday's teams reinfused this frequently abused old tournament with the virtues that legend claims on its behalf.

Around the world viewers in other footballing countries will have had their impressions of the English game soundly reinforced. Whatever it may have lacked in finesse of thought and execution, this match lived up to the competition's finest traditions of emotional generosity. While it was going on, nothing else mattered. The universe consisted of one football pitch, two squads and 71,140 spectators. And for once extra-time and the shoot-out became bonuses rather than tiresome prolongations.

This may have been the last FA Cup decider to be played at the Millennium Stadium but it had more of the Wembley aura about it than all the five previous finals played in Cardiff put together; even more, surely, than any but the finest of the 72 matches played at Wembley itself. But for an FA Cup final to work properly, it needs mistakes. It has to have players who are overcome by the nature of the occasion or, in the case of those from other football cultures, who are disconcerted by sudden exposure to the passions unleashed within the stadium.

The latter phenomenon found its expression in the performance of Xabi Alonso, normally such a cultured and calm presence at the heart of Liverpool's midfield but on this occasion a man who could hardly dispatch the simplest pass with any hope of reaching his intended target. It was his short lateral ball that was intercepted by the extraordinary Yossi Benayoun, who started the move which ended with Jamie Carragher's heel giving West Ham the first goal of the match after 20 minutes.

When underdogs take the lead, anything can happen. And when West Ham doubled their advantage seven minutes later, thanks to Pepe Reina's misfield, the drama intensified. Now any Liverpool comeback would need to be on the scale of that seen in Istanbul a year ago, and so it proved to be. But West Ham succeeded where Milan had failed by restoring their lead, thanks to Paul Konchesky's over-hit cross, after Djibril Cisse and Gerrard had brought Liverpool level.

The pitch was hard and the grass short but in the last half-hour of normal time we might have been at Wembley in decades past as the strength drained from players' legs. One after another they went down, clutching hamstrings, calf muscles and groins.

"The fourth official has indicated that four extra minutes will be allowed," the announcer told the crowd, and on the final syllable of the word "allowed" the right boot of Gerrard sent the ball rifling past Shaka Hislop from a range of 30 yards, silencing West Ham's victory anthems and setting up an unforgettable extra half-hour of pain and suffering.

By now all substitutions had been used and Liverpool's players, with a 62-match season in their legs, seemed to suffer most. After only five minutes of extra-time Carragher and Steve Finnan were both trying to stretch away the effects of cramp. Cisse pulled up with an injured thigh. Under other circumstances he would have been off the pitch and straight on to the treatment table. But if there was any thought of his place in France's World Cup squad in his head, he did not show it. With heavy strapping around the damaged muscle, he carried on.

And so, most poignantly of all, did Marlon Harewood, West Ham's heavyweight forward, who redeemed an otherwise unremarkable performance by playing out the last five minutes with a heavily bandaged left foot and ankle.

Drama on drama, bad luck chasing good, a denouement featuring Reina's redemption, and an outcome that no one could claim was fortuitous or undeserved. In every other sense, however, you would have to say that a marvellous day ended with honours even.

• Guardian Service