Sliema Wanderers head the all-time FA Trophy winners’ list with 21 successes. Photo: Paul Zammit Cutajar

There are many who cherish episodes marked with romance in life.

Football is no exception as the game is replete with stories that verge from fairytale to highly-sentimental endings.

Leicester City’s Premier League title this year falls into this romantic category not so much for an unexpected success as for stirring an achievement that has done the game of football in the international sphere a world of good.

On the local stage, Sliema Wanderers would proudly recount in many years to come their milestone success in the 2016 FA Trophy competition last Saturday – an episode that will remain cemented in the history of the club.

The Wanderers’ love affair with the historic FA Trophy is an established fact in the annals of Maltese football.

The iconic solid silver trophy, donated to the Malta Football Association by the English FA in recognition of the wholehearted backing given to the England team by a vociferous group of Maltese present for the Italy-England friendly match in Rome on March 13, 1933, is a gem of a prize.

The first edition of the FA Trophy knock-out competition, initially reserved for top-flight Maltese teams and which was to become the second most prestigious honour in local football, was won by the Wanderers when they beat Floriana 4-0 in the 1935 final.

Since then the Blues inscribed their name on the trophy a record 21 times out of the 78 editions of this competition which had a four-year interruption between 1941 and 1944 due to the outbreak of World War One.

The Wanderers’ longevity in terms of FA Trophy wins spanned eight decades, with the team emerging victorious at least once every 10 years with the exception of the eighties, a feat emulated by 19 times winners Floriana who missed out only in the first decade of this millennium.

The significant reality of Sliema’s triumph in last Saturday’s final against Balzan is the fact that a romantic knot for the Blues has been tied when the team closed the chapter of the original trophy after having been its first winners 82 years earlier.

It was fitting that the most successful team in this competition should fold the annals of the original trophy blueprint before it is shelved and replaced by a new one commissioned by the Malta Football Association.

Also fitting is the fact that the new prize as from next season will bear most of the FA Trophy’s original features.

The Alpha and Omega of this historic silver trophy has now been consigned to history, with the Wanderers proud to be its first and last recipients.