There are precious few moments in a man's life which neither the corrosion of all those young nights and hard drinks nor the withering of age can condemn from memory.

One is walking through that tunnel on a Saturday like today, when the heart and the bunting are all aflutter. It is to feel yourself at the centre of the universe.

This is Wembley. Unique. Not The Tour, though, earnestly as they try to transmit the experience to anyone who pays a modest price to walk in the footsteps of glory.

Not the tale as it has been told a thousand times by the winners and losers of cup finals or the heroes of England through their ciphers in the public prints.

The glory of Wembley is not to be found in its ghostwriters. You have to walk with its ghosts.

If you are lucky - fortunate beyond the dreams of every sports reporter who ever drew deep breath as he climbed the Stadium steps - you have walked that tunnel with Bobby Moore.

Not with the ghost of a friend whose generous presence we miss so much, but with the greatest English footballer ever to grace that hallowed turf.

Not when the old place is quiet as a garden of remembrance, but when it is alive with expectation of more history about to be made.

Bobby did that for me, invited me to join him on his last walk on to the huge stage which was his spiritual home. It was a privilege beyond price.

Was it really a quarter of a century ago? It seems like yesterday.

It was Saturday, May 3, 1975, nine years after Moore became the only England captain to lay hands on the World Cup - hands, you may recall, from which he wiped Wembley's mud on the velvet balustrade of the Royal Box before taking delivery of the Jules Rimet Trophy from the white gloves of The Queen.

It wasn't the red shirt of that epic victory over Germany which he was wearing this day, not the regular white of England, nor, even, the claret and blue of West Ham.

As fate would have it, he was up against his beloved Hammers in the FA Cup Final in the white and black of Fulham.

'Nice to be home,' said Moore, as he strolled into the dressing room.

Be it an FA Cup Final or, like today, a World Cup qualifier, both teams go out to inspect the pitch and confront the atmosphere before changing.

Since Moore knew the Old Lady as well as he knew his wife, he forewent that tradition. Instead, he waited in the tunnel for the opposition to arrive, ready to prey on the Wembley nerves of his old team-mates - notably Billy Bonds, Frank Lampard and Trevor Brooking.

'Come on Bonzo, give us a laugh. Where are we going tonight, Frank? You all right, Trevor? The old voice sounds a bit croaky.'

The gamesmanship is a prelude to every Wembley game. And there is always a crisis, be it big or small. Or, in Fulham's case, both.

A dispute between rival sports goods companies over sponsor-ship found its way to the High Court that Saturday morning and the injunction obliged the Fulham players to black out the white markings on their boots.

Then, as they changed, they found they had forgotten to pack the shinpads and a police motor-cyclist was dispatched to a corner shop in Wembley to buy a dozen pairs.

'Too big,' said Alan Mullery, the other veteran of England exploits past who spent the autumn of his career with Moore at Craven Cottage. Someone then brought a hacksaw from the Stadium storeroom and cut the shinpads down to size.

West Ham were to do the same to Second Division Fulham - 2-0 in the end - but not without a fight.

'Remember to enjoy yourselves, lads,' said Fulham manager Alec Stock as Moore marched the team through the dressing-room door. 'This is it.'

To which Moore replied: 'You remember, Alec. Tall and proud up the tunnel. It's not just the walk of your life. Stride out there and show 'em we mean business. Important.'

So up that tunnel we went, shoulders back, eyes straight ahead, walking the walk.

According to every ghostwriter, every player describes the end of the tunnel as walking into a wall of noise, be there 100,000 in waiting for Bobby Moore 25 years ago or 78,000 for David Beckham this afternoon.

I wasn't playing, but I was still nervous. 'Don't worry,' said Bobby. 'You come to love the Wembley roar. It's not a wall, it's a warm bath of welcome.' He was right.

By the time you reach the grass, you are walking on air. The cheering swells, yet it sounds as if someone has turned the volume down. To sit among the huddle of manager, coaches and reserves on the touchline bench is to be inside a cocoon.

Yet the senses are so alert down there that the pace seems more deliberate, the physical contact firmer, the marking so tight that you think Wembley's wide open spaces must be in the car parks.

In that concentration zone, the game flies by. And if you're two goals down when the police and stewards fan out around the pitch perimeter, you knows it's all over.

Moore saw them that day and muttered under his breath: 'Here come the undertakers.'

But to his last Wembley teammates, he said out loud: 'Come on, only eight minutes to go.'

They finished surprisingly strongly, Fulham's old boys. But eight minutes wasn't enough.

The other walk along that tunnel, the one to the losers' dressing room, is not an experience I would wish upon Kevin Keegan and his England team later today.

Moore, who had toasted Alf Ramsey's health in World Cup victory back there in 1966, came out of the showers and saw a solitary bottle of champagne standing half-empty on a table. He left it untouched while he dressed and then, while all the other play-ers went for a drink in the banqueting hall, he climbed up the steps of the team coach.

When, eventually, he opened the little box and looked at his loser's medal, he said: 'I'm glad I didn't get many of these.'

The Bobby Moore story was woven through so much of the history of the monumental stadium which will be bulldozed after today. And he is in good company here among the ghosts of Matthews, Wright, Ramsey and the Hungarians of the 50s.

Somebody, in a mistaken attempt at embellishing nostalgia, gave Wembley the unofficial title of The Venue of Legends.

There was no need to state the obvious. Even in its dilapidated condition, Wembley remains the theatre of all our childhood dreams.

Whatever structure takes its place, it will never feel quite the same. Not even if the ghosts of Wembley past return to make it their new home.

The authorities, in their miserly propriety, are threatening to prosecute anyone who makes off today with a relic of the old place as a souvenir.

The skinflints are wrong. Wembley is not only unforgettable, but it belongs to the people. Just as the real Wembley experience belongs to its heroes.

Goodbye from Bobby. And goodbye from Wembley.