Ah, isn’t it great that the FA Cup draw has now been restored to its traditional slot of Monday lunchtime?
Err, no.
Could someone possibly explain to me how this was supposed to be good news? You’ll have to do better than knee jerk nostalgia here. Ah, the magic of the FA Cup? Remember how we all huddled around our steam-powered radios listening to the gentle sound of ball and velvet from distant Lancaster Gate? Lord help us, it’ll be remember Spangles and Spacehoppers next. Welcome to the latest pointless BBC2 nostalgia fest: We Love the FA Cup.
Now I speak as someone who has defended many football traditions in my time. I don’t like squad numbers, new grounds or goal celebration music. I do like proper team colours, matches on Saturday afternoons and four national divisions. But what tradition are we defending here? When people of my era were growing up the FA Cup draw took place at a particular arbitrary time, and therefore it must be a good thing that it reverts to that time? Hey, and does anyone remember the Top Forty on a Tuesday lunchtime? When exactly did this minor act of scheduling become a big deal tradition?
Personally, I liked the FA Cup draw on Sunday for a simple reason: I could watch it. I don’t work on Sunday afternoons. I’m usually at home. It was convenient. And watching the FA Cup draw was a genuinely exciting experience when Burnley were involved, particularly as we often seem to be one of the last numbers out. Each new ball drawn would bring its own reaction to an imagined fixture against us, spanning the spectrum from horror – please, anyone but them – to soaring, giddy hope – it’s got to be us next. I enjoyed the spectacle of the draw when we were involved, when I could watch it.
One of the most exciting FA Cup draws in recent years took place on a Saturday night following an away game at Millwall. Yes, that was when we were allowed to support our team at Millwall. Following the game we crowded into a friendly pub and watched the draw. It was only the first round – back when we had to play in the first round – but it was a communal experience. To each ball we reacted as though our number would be next. We booed or cheered every number – or at least until we got Barnet away.
Monday lunchtime, by comparison, is just ruddy inconvenient. That’s when I’m at work. Oh sure, I could sneak a radio into the office, but then the phone rings, the meeting overruns, and the moment’s gone. I found out about the Fourth Round Draw – if we make it to the Fourth Round – by a text message. I looked the other ties up on the internet. Thrilling. Just as good as watching the draw being made, and all very traditional I’m sure.
Oh well, if you’ve bought this sop to invented tradition from the FA, this bone they’ve thrown you, I hope you’re happy with it. But have you not wondered why the change? Because it’s easy. It costs them nothing. It was a lazy piece of populism. Bone idle journalists and football’s useless legion of claptrappers duly lapped it up. Cue lots of people who get paid to follow football rather than pay to do it – always a crucial distinction – praising the change. Well, they’re not put out. And of course journalists were happy. That was the Monday bulletins made nice and easy. That was something to write about in Tuesday’s paper.
In case you didn’t notice, while you were indulging in trivial nostalgia, the FA also confessed that, once that world’s most expensive football ground has been built in North West London, all FA Cup semi finals will be played there for the next 30 years. How very traditional of them! So expensive is this new ground – a white woolly mammoth without parallel – that they need to stage as many games as possible there to justify the cost. Hmm. Do the words ‘cart before horse’ spring to mind? If we have to move games to this new ground to justify building it, perhaps we just don’t need a new ground. Perhaps there simply aren’t enough high profile games each season to justify a big new national stadium. I realise this is not how it works down Soho Square way, but shouldn’t someone have worked out how much income was available and built a ground within those limits? Having greenlighted this Son of Dome, they’ll do what they have to to make it pay.
So, just like the FA and League Cup Finals – successfully staged a number of times now in Cardiff – and England internationals – encouragingly played on the national population’s doorsteps up and down our nation – the Cup semis must now be played at New Wembley for three decades – by the end of which time there will be people playing in those matches who weren’t even born when the ground opened! Do you see what tradition counts for now, when it matters, when up against the fact of hard cash? Football’s docile public are kept happy with something trivial while the competition continues to be devalued.
But at least we have our Cup draw on Monday lunchtime.
Nah, the magic of the Cup has long gone, and it’s going to take more than that to bring it back. The competition has suffered too many changes, brought about by financial expediency and a need to accommodate the pernicious wishes of the big clubs and the police force. Do you know why the Cup doesn’t feel like it used to? Because they did away with multiple replays, introduced penalty shoot outs, inserted an extra week before a replay, moved the third round to December and then back again, starting spreading matches around the weekend for TV (I think the other season one of four quarter finals was played on a Saturday afternoon), moved the semi finals to Sundays, mucked around with the timing of the final (on recent occasions even playing before the end of the League season, so we had the extraordinary sight of clubs resting their best players in the Final), allowed venue switches for financial reasons (although these days spurious safety reasons must be quoted first), encouraged the Cup holders one year to not defend their trophy, let a ‘lucky loser’ from one round go through to the next to make up the numbers, slapped a sponsor’s name and even sponsored ribbons on the Cup itself, and allowed semi finals to be played at Wembley. After countless stupid changes, this Cup no longer matters as it used to. It doesn’t feel like it should any more. Plus big clubs don’t make enough money out of it to take it seriously. It’s better to scrape fourth in the Premier League even if you then lose all your group games in the Champions League than to actually win a trophy.
I know the Cup has no magic because last Sunday I woke unexpectedly early and hauled myself before the box to catch the last hour of Match of the Day, during which both Lee Dixon and Steve Claridge failed the claptrapper audition comprehensively. I watched the highlights of game after game, but what I saw was row upon row of empty seats. At Villa, Sheffield Utd, Preston – yeah, and at Grimsby – were acres of unfilled spaces. No one’s that interested anymore. Sure, when a big club comes to town the glory hunters will turn up to wave their new scarves, but these days, for run of the mill Cup games, no one can really be arsed. In this age when it costs you twenty quid to sit in the open air behind the goal, who can afford Cup matches too? Yet I can remember a time not far back when Cup games used to get bigger gates than League matches. They were special, and people made an effort to get to them. That was before all these changes robbed the competition of meaning. It’ll take more than doing the draw a day later.
And don’t get me started on the BBC, current highest bidder guardian of Cup heritage. In their lame trailers they make much of the competition’s shock value, but when it comes down to their choice of televised games nine times out of ten they’ll plump for the all Premier clash. The whole point of a cup competition is that it offers novelty, throwing up clashes between sides that rarely play each other. But in a third round with any number of intriguing ties – West Ham v Forest, Wolves v Newcastle, Manu v Portsmouth, they offered Southampton v Spurs and Man City v Liverpool – two games between teams that play each other anyway. These matches aren’t even anticipated in the context of the Premier League. Such was the backlash that in the next round they’re trying to offer something non Premier, but naturally enough they’ve got that wrong too, screening Shrewsbury v Chelsea because they missed the big upset in the last round and in the hope that lightning will strike twice. It won’t. Couldn’t they just have got it right in the first place? It will take more imagination than they have shown if this competition is to be rescued.
Ah well, bollocks to the Cup. I’m off to concentrate on the League.
