Seeing the FA Cup paraded around Market Place, just like we predicted on the PWU Podcast, was something of a surreal experience. Of course, we were never totally serious about it all, were we? The very notion of such a thing is foolish, surely? But no, this afternoon I got to see Arouna Kone balance the FA Cup in one hand and his iPad in the other before whipping the assembled crowd of approximately 30,000 into a veritable frenzy.

George Formby gets caught up in cup fever.

The power of belief.

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First on the coach for a sunny start to the journey.

In-coach breakfast. Haven’t had steak pie in ages. And don’t worry, I cleaned up the mess afterwards.

On the road to Wembley. Note how, the closer we got to the capital, the wetter it became. Strange, it’s normally the other way around.

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"Get lost you lot! I'm supposed to be on holiday!"

Such has been the recent fervent media activity over Roberto Martinez’s future, you’d be forgiven for thinking Wigan’s last competitive game was far longer than two weeks ago. Yeah, we’ve had lengthier mid-season international breaks, but it already feels as though we’ve been in the post-season wind-down (pfft, yeah right) phase forever.

To satiate your requirement for Latics stuff (for a few minutes at least), feel free to take a moment out of your busy Twitter-browsing schedule (of the #wafc tag, of course) and re-live that final day of the season. It might not have been as important as in recent years, but it was just as great to be a part of.

As usual, the best of this bad bunch will (eventually) be uploaded to the Illarterate Flickr account in high quality. Also as usual, they’re released under Creative Commons so you can use them on your Facebook page/website/school newspaper/whatever – provided I get some credit, of course.

This was one of those games you wish you’d brought a cap for, especially if you’re towards the back of the East Stand. I did not and spent 3/4 of the game shielding my eyes from the sun, as it was a surprisingly clement afternoon for Wigan in October. It kind of made up for the lack of positive on-pitch action, but not really. Still, here are some photos from the warmup for this South Lancastrian clash.

A bumper selection of pics for you today. High quality images will be made available on the Flickr Illarterate stream under the Creative Commons Attribution license. This means you are free to repost them wherever you wish, provided some credit is applied.