The FA Cup: still the best?
Deserted towns, seemingly 24-hour TV build-up and the only day when it's not frowned upon to start drinking before lunch. The FA Cup used to be really special, and your typical day might have looked a little something like this one sent in by listener Phil...
9.30am - Off to the shops for a quarter of Kola Kubes and a can of dandelion & burdock.
9.40am - Impromptu FA Cup final begins at the Broom School, Ferryhill. You pick the player you will be. I always liked to be Frank Stapleton when he was appearing.
11.00am - Back home. Get old man his first can of McEwans of the day.
11.30am - Dad's mate Jimmy arrives with 12 more cans of McEwans. I get a 'dash' in a glass, topped up with lemonade.
11.31am - TV goes on. Teams are leaving the hotels.
11.45am - Mother sticks her head out of the kitchen taking sarnie orders.
12.00pm - Goal of the Season competition begins.
12.15pm - Ham and pease pudding sarnies are served. McEwans all round.
12.30pm - Steve Davis, Jimmy Tarbuck and Lenny Bennett are interviewed in the studio at Wembley. In front of a backdrop of a kids' 7-a-side match on the pitch.
12.45pm - Novelty item - turns out one of the players featuring in the final is an ace snooker player. He plays a frame whilst being interviewed by Willie Thorne.
1.00pm - Break for news.
1.10pm - Teams filmed on their coaches on the way to the ground.
1.30pm - Goal of the Season winner announced. Usually Cyril Regis.
1.50pm - Teams arrive at the ground. Wander about smiling and punching each other playfully in the arm.
2.00pm - Celebrity match kicks off. A kid from Musical Youth scores a blinder past Daley Thompson. Steve Cram is rubbish and spends most of his time laughing with Tommy Cannon.
2.15pm - Sisters begin complaining loudly about the football being on all day.
2.20pm - Sisters taken to the shops by my mother.
2.30pm - Uncle Lenny arrives, looking flustered. Spends 5 minutes berating my Aunty Ellie and the fact that she made him go shopping in Middlesbrough on 'today of all days'.
2.37pm - Uncle Lenny finishes his third can of McEwans.
2.50pm - Abide with Me. Not a dry eye in the house. My dad won't shut up about the times he's been there watching Newcastle and how the Geordies 'sing this better than anyone'.
2.51pm - 'Except Sunderland' retorts mackem Uncle Lenny.
2.55pm - Players shake hands with Duke of Edinburgh. One wag cracks a joke and laughs heartily. Duke of Edinburgh doesn't.
3.00pm - Game on.
But with at least one team in the Champions League final year after year and the likes of the World Club Championship causing headaches for those who write fixture lists - is the FA Cup still the best cup competition in the world? Our lines will be open from 8am on Saturday morning if you want to join the debate.
Call 0500 909 693, text 85058 or post a message below.
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the f.a cup is still a great cup competition but it comes 3rd in terms of importance to football fans and the teams who compete in domestic competitions the biggest prize and competition is the champions league trophy followed by the domestic league in each country for us its the premier league and then its the f.a cup but make no mistake the champions league is a diffrent animal all together without a shadow of doubt about that i still love the f.a cup but and allways will but in terms of priority its the 3rd most important trophy
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I remember the days being just like that, without quite so much beer. ;-) But nowadays the FA Cup is something of a consolation prize, isn't it?
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The FA cup is still the best cup competition in the world. Qualifying starts in August and last year 762 teams entered the competition. That is by far more than any other cup competion. It gives a platform for the smaller 'unglamorous teams' to write themselves into the archives of English Football. It throws up great stories. Hear the name Ronny Radford and any football fan will see the same clip in their minds. Arsenal fans will remember being knocked out by Wrexham and Coventry fans are still to this day harping on about 1987. They've even named their fanzine after Gary Mabbutts knee.
Compare this to the Champions League. Its not even a knockout tournament. You can have one bad game in the group stages and still go on a win it. The same as the Uefa cup. The FA Cup however does not reward failure. One bad game and your out. That is why the underdog still has its chance. Its not about money or gate receipts. Its about running out at Wembley on a sunny day in May. Fans of Man Utd/Chelsea/Liverpool etc would probably prefer their club to win the Champions League to the FA Cup. However ask any English footballer and I bet when they were younger they pretended to score the winning goal in the FA Cup final at Wembley rather than the winning goal in the European cup in Moscow.
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What a beautiful trip down memory lane that was. I too remember sitting in front of the TV for hours, waiting with anticipation, absorbing all the punditry, unable to move in case an important tit-bit was missed.
I also look back now and realise that most of the games were crap! And let's face it, they still are.
I personally haven't watched the Final for years. Last year I was in a pub in Gloucestershire, and purposely sat outside so I didn't have to watch the drab, boring football on display.
OK, so it gives Huddersfield or Tottenham a chance for silverware (however slight), and for those fans a great day out. But the FA Cup as it was is dead.
Quite frankly, all clubs now want to get promoted to the Premiership, and then have a chance to play United and Liverpool twice a season, and on that will they judge their success. Managers can't put effort into the FA Cup, if they don't do well in the League, they're sacked!!! And as heart warming it is when some lowly club climbs magnificently past Liverpool and Chelsea, with hopes of the Nation lifted that anything is actually possible. But they never win, the dream is never achieved.
The future is the Champions League, no matter what Allrightguv may think. Ask most footballers now which they'd rather, and you'd get two answers -
1. F.A Cup from Nobby McTackle who plays for his local pub.
2. Champions League por favor - from most of the foreign players the country is saturated with.
English Footballers???? I can almost remember those too :)
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Yes it is but its been devalued through no fault of its own.
From 1888, when the Football League started, until the mid-1990s, winning the FA Cup was the second most prestigious outcome possible from a domestic season in terms of living in the collective memory it even shaded the League title (most of us could more easily recall the Cup winners than the champions from any given year because weve seen the iconic images).
But once the European Cup was expanded to include non-champions, and the TV money allocated to the top flight grew out of all proportion, the FA Cup suffered to the extent that it is now arguably the 21st most prestigious outcome to a season after the 17 survival places in the Prem and the three promotion places. (For prestigious read lucrative, which is what matters more to many people in football.)
We now have the situation where the final of a little knockout competition between four clubs who werent good enough to get promoted to the top flight is hyped up as worth more than the European Cup Final. And when theres a close relegation battle as there was this year, even middling top flight clubs openly disregard the FA Cup as a priority.
Those of us who grew up with the Cup in its prime are desperate for it to regain its old status, but its difficult to maintain the illusion that it still matters as much as it did to players and managers.. It cant compete in terms of prize money, but one way to restore some of its appeal is to allocate a Champions League place to the winners, reflecting the fact that winning a trophy should carry a greater reward than finishing fourth as indeed it always did until very recently.
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