When I was a kid I was infatuated with the FA Cup. It was the classic femme fatale - kooky, self-assured and unpredictable. Once a year she would brazenly flirt with you, drawing you in. You knew the risks in falling for her charms - she did the same with everyone else, after all - but you just couldn’t help yourself.
Sometimes one brief encounter would lead to another and perhaps even another and the promise of something momentous. Then she’d push you away, her head turned by someone else; the same guys always got the girl.
These days I have grown up. I’m more cynical, less romantic, less easily charmed. The cup isn’t the same as it used to be, I tell myself. For those clubs threatened with relegation it’s a distraction. For the heavyweights it represents nothing more than a consolation prize when the Champions League and Premier League are out of reach. For those clubs outside the top flight, well, forget it.
There are other reasons to hanker for the good ole days. Penalties have been introduced to decide the first replay, so we are deprived of those epic contests that run and run until players and fans are sick of the sight of each other. The semi-final is played at Wembley, devaluing the final. Then there is Wembley itself – stylish, modern, functional, but shorn of its iconic twin towers and those Roman Colosseum style arches and colonnades that made the old stadium the most unique and beautiful in the world.
The first cup final I remember was the Brighton - Manchester United classic of 1983, and I never missed one until the mid-nineties when The Premiership was born, my adolescence had faded and a more hormone-driven idea of romance had taken hold.
During my “FA Cup years”, the routine would remain unchanged. I would turn on Grandstand at midday and lose myself completely to the occasion, watching right through until the famous trophy was lifted. Like the cup’s traditions, the BBC’s coverage never seemed to vary. I used to love those overhead shots of the coaches as they crawled through the capital from the team hotels. Later on we’d see the players mooching around on the hallowed turf wearing tight suits and even tighter smiles. The cup really, really mattered.
My dream was to see my team, Charlton Athletic, run out at a seething, combustible Wembley. I recall the cruel injustice I felt when my Dad refused to take me to the Full Members Cup Final in 1987. “It’s not the FA Cup” he had said. “It’s a Mickey Mouse cup. The ground will be half empty.” He was right. We lost 1-0 to Blackburn Rovers in front of 43,000 fans, only 15,000 from Charlton spread all over the stadium.
My Wembley moment finally came in 1998 and it didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t the FA Cup but the Division One Play-Off Final. Sunderland were the opposition, Clive Mendonca the hero. Extra Time. 4-4. Penalties. Sasa Ilic. Pandemonium.
Promotion, to most of our fans, meant days out at the cathedrals of English football. For me though, this was overwhelmingly trumped by our naturally increased chances of a cup run. Cup romance belonged to the minnows, I reasoned, but the latter stages were the domain of the footballing elite, an exclusive club to which we now belonged.
To my eternal disappointment our cup performances remained unremittingly awful. For Premiership games, the home atmosphere was charged, The Valley a bear pit, but when the cup came around and Walsall or Blackpool or Dagenham and Redbridge rolled into town, everything was colder, greyer, flatter. It was as if we simply couldn’t adapt to being the giants.
Since 1984 and my first trip to The Valley we’ve been to the FA Cup quarter finals just three times and never beyond. For my whole life it has seemed that a cup run, like a lottery win, is something that only happens to someone else.
Three decades on and, despite our wretched league form, we find ourselves in the quarters once more. This Sunday we take on Sheffield United of League One at Bramall Lane. Just as in 2006, we are a poor side that has been given a favourable route to the last eight and a tantalising opportunity to reach Wembley.
In Chris Powell we have a manager who not only has a deep connection with our club but who shares my yearning for FA Cup glory, for it proved a cruel mistress during his time as a player. Though the spectre of relegation has hung over us all season, he has fielded his strongest side in every round. When we won at Sheffield Wednesday in Round Five I felt a kind of delirium that I thought had died in me long ago. Chris felt it too, swinging like a kid from the Hillsborough crossbar.
Whatever happens this Sunday, I am grateful for this reawakening of my passion for the cup. It may have sacrificed a little of its once untouchable grandeur in adjusting to its new niche amongst the commercial leviathans that surround it, but it still has an emotional hold over me, pushing aside much of the cynicism I feel towards the modern game.
I can’t speak for other Charlton fans but I can honestly say that, given the choice, I would take relegation and a day at Wembley over Championship survival and defeat at Bramall Lane. Teams go up. Teams go down. Life goes on. But a fan’s life story is told not in terms of league positions but of individual moments in time, tales of heroism and heartbreak that will survive the generations. Perhaps this Sunday will provide another.
My name is Nick, I am thirty seven and I’m still addicted to the FA Cup.
https://twitter.com/nickallbury 
Comments
Arsenal 3 Man Utd 2 in '79 was my first final, which we watched on ITV because the picture was slightly brighter. And I think the following year Arsenal (and England) coach Don Howe actually drove the team bus to Wembley, if memory serves.
I used to be able to remember all the finals, results and scorers going back to 1973. Now I can't even remember who won the year before last.
Seriously, very well written and a good read.
thanks Nick
Thank you for that posting. Very well said.
The FA Cup is really not held in the same esteem as it once was - it used to be something that people went out of their way to watch on TV, and the TV used to take delight in covering. The Premiership - where average players sell for more than a Championship football club does and the focus is all about the money that's generated - has changed English football so dramatically; the biggest relegation since then is of the FA Cup to a lower league of footballing status. Watching teams, whether big or small, battle through the rounds to get to the Cup Final is seen as a distraction to many, but the reality is that it's where the heart of football truly lies.
Thanks again, Nick. Top man.
Keeeeep writing !!
The other thing that makes me chuckle when I look back is that my Boys' Brigade company always decided to have our 'display' the same evening as the Cup Final and it was always a mad rush to get there, especially if there was extra time. The two events just seemed to go hand in hand and my memory of these days gives me the same magical impression of timelessness as listening to St Etienne, with the window down, driving on a sunny, carefree summer's day.
Used watch at first from about 1965 with my Dad and Grandad, then as I grew up used to watch at a mates house who had colour TV!! Then I moved to the pub to watch the game as the years went by. Now sadly it has lost its magic, although (I think I'm right in saying) its back on The Beeb from next season and I think in some way that might help restore some of its magic, if only on cup-final day its self.
Thanks @leightonaddick for rekindling some fantastic memories that had been locked away for more than a decade!!
West Ham beating Preston in the last minute 3-2 in 63/64 with Alan Kelly the Preston keeper hardly able to stand.
Liverpool beating horrible Leeds 2-1 a year later and many more.
In later years my mates would come around to watch it. We would get the beers in and the missus would make a big pile of sandwiches.
Strangely, on Sunday United will be favourites playing at home with 8 straight wins behind them under a very good young manager. I have a feeling that it might go to the team that scores first. I really hope that CP does not set us up to just avoid defeat, but we will see. Whatever happens the cup run is adding some brightness to an otherwise largely miserable season.
Typically, the tie with the most magic, is the one the TV companies seemed less interested in - says a lot about football today.
I think the main solution to restoring the cup's status would be to put the winners in the Champions League (but only winners, not runners-up to a team that finished top 3). That way, a lot rests on the outcome, same as play-off finals.