May 17 2013

Mile Jedinak

Crystal Palace skipper Mile Jedinak is relishing the prospect of leading his side out at Wembley.

Palace meet Watford on Bank Holiday Monday with the winners claiming a place in the Premier League and a cheque of around £100m.

And the Aussie midfielder is determined to help guide the Eagles to glory on this huge occasion and a place in English football's elite.

"Growing up as a kid I watched FA Cup finals back home in Australia at all hours of the morning," he said. "This will be special and definitely something to savour. It will be right up there in my career.

"You've got two teams that are probably now at the top of their game again after a little bit of an indifferent period.

"Watford will be full of confidence after all the dramatics in their semi-final, but we can take confidence from our win at Brighton. It should be a cracker.

"We all know the importance of it and what is at stake. Whoever can keep their composure and calmness will be the team which prevails. Hopefully we can do that again."

Palace made it through after a 2-0 aggregate win over rivals Brighton who Jedinak felt came unstuck for being too cocky.

He said: "We could sense that they were possibly a bit over confident, but look what happened in the end. We took that and used it as ammunition.

"I knew that whoever could keep their composure and calmness over the two legs would have been in the ascendancy.

"Although in the first half we weren’t at our best, we took a lot of momentum from the second period. We knew what type of arena that we were in and that it was a huge rivalry.

"And obviously it’s the result that we wanted but on top of that it was the performance that we wanted as well. We knew that we would have to stand up coming here, it is a one-sided crowd we all know that.

"I thought our fans were brilliant as well and I couldn’t have been more proud of the lads for the way that they stood up and were counted."