Sometimes I remember the old games like that Cardiff one more clearly than much more recent ones. Isn't that supposed to be a sign of dementia? Hope not - I'm only fifty!
When we played in the third round of the Cup that year, we were top of the league. I knew we weren't good enough to be champions - we'd played more games than others around us because we had undersoil heating and most of them didn't, so suffered more postponements - but I thought we could definitely win the FA Cup. And, as others on here mentioned, the fact that we'd done so twice in our history the year after losing in the final seemed like an omen. I was absolutely gutted when Coventry beat us. Of course, much greater disappointments were to follow, but I was young in January 1982 and didn't know that then! :)