“Come on!” I shouted, hands funnelling the sound from my parched mouth, “It’ll be dark soon!”

Jack Dudley shuffled nervously along the branch, holding onto another for support. “My missus is gonna kill me!” he shouted.

“If the crocodiles don’t get you first,” I thought, grimly. In the distance a monkey howled. “It’ll be fine,” I lied, fumbling in my jacket for a Capstan. The vine on which I’d arrived had now come to rest; my companion never did like heights. “Your Madge’ll understand.”

Another whopper. Understanding was precisely what Margaret Dudley didn’t do. Nagging, moaning, berating, intervening, moving back to her mother’s and standing outside Manders’ on a Friday to intercept pay packets – that was much more Madge’s style. On one occasion she’d even suggested we watch Stafford Road when Wolves were playing away; Jack threatened to move back in with his mother after that.

“You go, Gonby,” he shouted, teetering nervously, “I’ll wait here for you.”

“Your Madge’ll understand.” Another whopper.

“Come on, will you!” I insisted, “I think it’s going to be by that Iroko tree over there. I reckon there might be a quicker route back. I saw a thirsty-looking Urangutan swinging from there which suggests there’s water nearby; it might be the pond we saw when we…”

“Aaaaaaaaah!” I turned around and a Jack Dudley, twice the size of the last one I had seen, with his mouth open wider than the crocodiles’ below us seconds earlier crashed into me. We both lost our footing, fell and stopped outselves plunging to our certain doom by only clutching desperately onto the branch I had been standing on. After regaining our breath we clambered back up onto the branch and assessed our next moves.

Since an ill-fated trip to Derby with the Speleologist Squadron earlier in the season (we’d lost 2-1), Madge had been nagging Jack about looking after his clothes. When I’d called for him that morning she’d continued the theme, telling him over and over again to save his best suit for her sister’s wedding that Tuesday. “Always wear best for the Cup,” he’d insisted, both impressing and surprising me with the way he held his ground (in fact, as he explained later, he hadn’t yet repaired the trousers of his other suit after riding bareback from Wembley after the previous year’s cup final. As yet, best was holding up all right but there was some difficult terrain left to navigate. He’d also lost his cap when we were forced to swim away from poisonous frogs near the main entrance.

The original Crystal Palace football club had been comprised of gardeners and workers at the site, and such was the zeal with which they’d adopted the sport that their duties around the site had gone entirely neglected since a horticultural exhibition had been staged there decades before. Under the glass the exhibit had grown out of all control and somewhere along the line a host of exotic fauna had moved in. Unfortunately, Jack and I had been informed of all this moments after volunteering to retrieve the matchball, and while I never minded a bit of adventure, I had no desire to confront the nocturnal equivalents to the diurnal perils that had already beset us. And though an abandonment of the fixture through bad light would have favoured Wolves, it wouldn’t have been sporting on a plucky Crystal Palace team about to pull off a major feat of giant-killing. Plus revenues from the next round would help pay for the glass Dicky Baugh’s wayward screamer had broken.

“We’ll have to head down,” I said, eyeing the crocodiles warily.

I climbed up to the next bough and tested its strength; there was little chance it would sustain me as far as the next creeper. “We’ll have to head down,” I said, eyeing the crocodiles warily. We moved slowly down the trunk until we were low enough to jump; the crocodiles watched us but seemed to have conceded the race on land. We sprinted to the Iroko tree, looked around and there it was: camouflaged against the earth beneath but now identifiable. I had never touched a Wolverhampton Wanderers match ball before and I felt proud and excited as I lifted it from behind the fronds of a Monsteria Deliciosa. “Can I hold it, too?” asked Jack, and I gave it to him with a smile.

Then we saw it.

The moving stripes at first looked like nothing more than gently moving leaves. But I knew that within these crystal walls there could be no breeze. Then the yellow of its eyes. I whispered to Jack that we had to run but before my words had concluded he had spotted the tiger, screamed and scarpered. I sprinted after him, though I was convinced we were going in the wrong direction, grabbing a thick stick I found on the ground to use as a weapon if need be. After thirty yards a company of parrots noted our progress and raised a piercing, rhythmic accompaniment to the drama. Jack stumbled upon a root and I overtook him, seeing a clearing in front of us that could only mean one thing. As he clambered to his feet I saw the tiger in the distance, shouted at Jack to hurry, and beat hard at the glass with the end of my stick. It gave out with an awesome crash and Jack and I leapt through, with the feline in close pursuit. It was another fifty yards before I dared to turn around; the tiger, disorientated by the cold British winter outside, remained at the boundary of his domain, gave a single roar, and turned back into his jungle. The parrots were silent. We got back to the terrace and returned the ball, at which time I noticed a long tear in Jack’s sleeve. Madge really would kill him, and Wolves really were going out of the Cup. We lit a Capstan, watched the vain quest for late goals, and headed to the Bunch of Grapes, where our huskies were tied.