I knew this was going to happen.
It crossed my mind, when writing an article about the FA Cup, that I was daring fate to mock me. What, I thought, when poised at keyboard, was the worst thing that could happen? That Burnley might go on some kind of run, stuff a Premier League club and get to a senior stage of the Cup, and then this competition would start seeming magical, leaving me looking like a bit of a prat? I decided if that happened, I could live with it. So it came to pass. One of my rules of life is that you have to offer fortune a hostage. I may even start claiming a slice of the credit.
I should clarify, in response to one of the comments made following my original article, that I haven’t taken my alleged objection to the FA Cup so far as to actually boycott the competition. I confess to having seen FA Cup games this season. I don’t share my friend Igor Wowk’s rather worrying interest in non-league football, but this is a broad church that we inhabit. Lack of interest kept me away from the Third Round, while a foreign work commitment cruelly denied me a local match in the Fourth. Believe me, Brazil or Brentford wasn’t an easy decision to make. Like a glory hunter, in I came at Round Five, which was immediately the most advanced stage of the FA Cup I had ever witnessed. I was proud of the lads at Fulham that day, and chuffed for the gaffer that his game plan worked. I enjoyed the day, had a good drink and thought the support was excellent. Even if we now go out in the replay, I thought, I’ll have got enjoyment from this Cup.
And then it got far better than that. It was simply an honour to witness our performance at home to Fulham. It was one of those nights where you knew that to be a Burnley supporter is a fine thing. My instant reaction after the first match was that I had to be there for the replay, and I was so pleased that I swallowed my doubts and made a rare midweek trip to see it happen. We were simply brilliant, in every respect the better side, and for once we got the media credit.
Sadly, one other outcome of the night was that I have now lost any lingering respect I once had for Fulham. They were dreadful. We’ve beaten better Premier sides than that this season. And what a bunch of whiners! Tigana will forever now be remembered by Clarets as a rotten loser and a bit of a tosser. Thankfully, his ridiculous sore loser comments were given short shrift by all. No one who had seen the game for real or on TV could have given time to his surreal excuses. His criticisms of us were so far detached from reality that they left me wondering what goes into those toothpicks of his. Fulham played like what they are these days: a club with no heart, no soul and no spirit anymore. The manager’s off, the players are off, and the club is never going home again. Fulham also offered one of the worst displays of away support I have ever seen. There were so few of them (‘it’s a long way to come for a night match’ said the bloke behind me) and they made no attempt to encourage their team. Of course, afterwards Fulham folk whinged about the alleged physical nature of our win. Come on! This is not even new territory. Funny, ain’t it, how Fulham tend to come to Turf Moor, get a man sent off and then complain about rough tactics? Wouldn't it be nice, just once, for the opposition manager to admit we'd played better than them and deserved the win?
My response to what we saw of Fulham on the night will be to stick a tenner on them going down next season. Keep an eye on this. I think it's Franchise 2 in the making.
Fulham disposed of, the only real downer was that we are obliged to go to Watford again, which makes it about two more times in a season than you’d want to. It was earlier this season that I came to the conclusion that I had exhausted all the entertainment possibilities Watford had to offer, and there was simply nothing more I could do there. After seven visits since I flitted south in the mid-nineties, only geographical proximity was keeping me going. Wrong! An FA Cup Quarter Final offers considerable novelty. My brother vowed never to go again, and now he is breaking his promise! Okay, Watford is a dismal place to go for it, but we’re playing our peers, we know we can win there, and we’ve got a chance.
This is not to turn the game into a battle of good v evil, as some Watford sites seem to be set on doing ahead of the game. I don’t like the town – okay, I hate it – but I’ve regained a little of my respect for the club given the way they’ve gone about things this season. After disastrously going down the glamour route (hey, we've all tried it at least once) and being seduced by the free-spending and splendidly inept Super Luca (now suing them for money including bonuses he would have received for promotion to the Premier!), they’ve been forced to get sensible this season. Rather like ourselves, they now have an unglamorous but competent manager in charge of some workmanlike players, and have acknowledged that to avoid administration and maintain First Division status will not exactly be a disaster. Sunday’s game merely decides which one of us has had a superb season. Whatever the outcome, I and I'm sure most Clarets will be hoping the winners and any other remaining First Division sides make it to the Final and stick it up the elite.
Given this, is there really any need for the leading unofficial Watford website to call our manager a toad? Pathetic!
Ahead of the game, I’m telling myself to just enjoy the day (to the extent that you can enjoy a day in Watford) and get what pleasure I can out of the first Quarter Final I’ll have seen. I’m trying to take the view that, should we lose, one thing I never expected to be was disappointed at failing to get into the FA Cup Semi Final. Although it’s an important game, if we win it, it’s not even the most important game of the last few years for us.
But I will admit that yes, I have fallen victim to that occasional epidemic, Cup Fever. I do feel anticipation. I dare to dream. It is possible, isn’t it, that what I am feeling is in some way connected with ‘the magic of the FA Cup’?
So how do I square this with my earlier stance? Partly, I think everyone should be large enough to contain contradictions, and anyone who saw me calling the ref at Millwall ‘a fat bastard’ will know that certainly applies with me.
I could bang on, of course, about not having criticised the FA Cup per se, but rather expressed my puzzlement at the knee-jerk nostalgic reaction with which people greeted the moving of the FA Cup draw to a stupid time, while seeking to contrast this exercise in easy nostalgia with the untraditional cynicism of insisting that all future FA Cup Semi Finals would be played at New Wembley, if ever built. (And it's still not a certainty. Now they've finally knocked down the old, crumbling, piss-stained mausoleum, surely this represents an opportunity to make something positive of this benighted patch of North London? If you agree, please join our campaign to build low-cost housing on the site of Wembley.) Yep, I could go on about that, but I rather feel I have done already. I shall just take quiet liberal pleasure at the thought of having generated some responses for once. By the way, note the highly traditional scheduling of the four Quarter Finals!
I shall conclude by (as has been requested) also voicing my strong and unyielding opposition to the very idea of the play-offs, which have always struck me as a quite ludicrous imposition. The play-offs are blatantly contrary to natural justice, and exist simply as a cynical exercise in money making. I for one hope Burnley have no part in this ridiculous competition, and in doing so play their part in maintaining the purity and supremacy of the Football League. I have further been asked to point out that, in any case, while Burnley have put together a great run in the League to match the Cup run, we really have got too much to do to reach the top six now, and while we are relying on one of the top six blowing up, this does not seem remotely probable.
In other words, bollocks to the play-off campaign. I'm off to concentrate on the FA Cup.
See you on Sunday.
