GILLINGHAM v WEST HAM UTD MOMENT NEVER TO FORGET.. Alvin Martin: Emotion with David at Chelsea and on winning FA Cup Final

ALVIN MARTIN believes it was fate he won the FA Cup with West Ham and his son David made his Premier League debut for his beloved club at the age of 33.

The emotional embrace between father and son in the Stamford Bridge stands after the goalkeeper’s November clean sheet is one of the moments of the season.

And the former England defender will be at Priestfield today, hoping to see David make his FA Cup debut for the Hammers against League One Gillingham.

Hammers legend Alvin said: “I just think fate sometimes plays a part in your life. Certainly in football.

“I left Liverpool was I was 15, nearly 16, to come to West Ham on trial after turning down a contract at Everton for £8 a week as an apprentice. And I still can’t explain that. But that is fate.

“And there is a certain amount of things that happen to you since that moment that you think, ‘Well, this has all been written’ – me playing the FA Cup Final and then my son getting his debut when he was 33.

“I think one of the most overwhelming moments of the day was before the game started and the reaction to Dave by the fans that were there. I think that was the reason I ended up coming here. You always try and find a reason that you came to a club, but that is the reason – because they are fantastic.”

David Martin, who joined the Hammers in the summer from Millwall, admitted it was “surreal” to have his name chanted throughout the game and then be mobbed by his ecstatic team-mates.

“It was emotional for me – not because West Ham had won and David had kept a clean sheet,” said talkSPORT pundit Alvin. “But because I knew what it meant to him. And I also knew what it would mean to him if it hadn’t gone well. As a father, I think we can all understand that.

“It’s the same if something beautiful happens with one of your kids or something dreadful happens. The pain or the ecstasy are far in excess of what you have probably experienced as a person yourself. So that was what got me.

“That one moment that we had – and it was literally three or four seconds – that was everything. We didn’t have to say another word. Everything we needed to communicate to each other was done in that instant.

“He knew what it meant to me – I knew what it meant to him.”

David, who sat on the bench for Liverpool, said: “I remember the morning in the hotel in Chelsea, and I was sitting on the edge of my bed waiting to go down, thinking, ‘I don’t know whether I can do this, I don’t know whether I can do this’.

“It was all the way up until about five minutes before that I was saying that in my head. And then, five minutes before, I said,

“I can do this”. You just go into that autopilot.

“Nobes (Mark Noble) came up to me right at the start of the game and said, ‘Right, whatever happens now, you’ve played in the Premier League’. It just settled me down a little bit more.

MARK MARSHALL is adamant Gillingham have nothing to fear when they host Premier League West Ham in the FA Cup.

League One Gills lock horns with the Hammers in the third round at Priestfield this evening.

David Moyes kicked off his second stint at the club with a