Finding myself at a loose end a couple of weekends ago, I decided that a dose of Extra Preliminary Round FA Cup action was needed to fill the gaping hole that a lack of football had left in my calendar. So, on something of a whim, I conceived a last-minute plan with a mate. The plan saw us travel to Blyth to catch the Spartans playing Newcastle Blue Star.
There is something intensely enjoyable about the FA Cup when it is in its infant stages. Watching non-league teams slog it out in the world’s oldest
football tournament holds a certain kind of romance that people who are not football tragics like myself simply won’t understand.
Non-league football itself is an incredibly odd concoction. The sporting spectacle itself is like something out of what I imagine football in the ’70s was like. Standing on concrete terraces awash with local history and pride, you watch a game of football that feels far removed from the ‘gegenpress’ and ‘double pivot midfield’ talk of the modern game.
There is something intensely pure about the football: the players so close you could almost touch them, the fans so deeply invested in not only the club but every single patron who walks through the gates, and the ability to stand alongside an opposition fan and talk to them about their season mid-game.
Don’t get me wrong, non-league football is often just as tribalistic and passionate as professional football is, maybe even more so at times. Yet non-league football fills gaps that contemporary football has left unsolved.
Yet there is also a weird sense of modernity to the game. Managers posture and cringe and march alongside the touchline like Arteta and Klopp. Many games are streamed and can be watched on social media sites.
Furthermore, the utterly serene and professional nature of the post-match interviews that the managers, coaching staff and players give after games leaves you feeling as if you are in the middle of some sort of identity crisis.
Am I watching a blast from the past or a Premier League tribute act?
The atmosphere only becomes hotter when it comes to the FA Cup preliminary rounds. The prospect of representing your town in one of the world’s best-known competitions is incredibly evocative.
Furthermore, the fact that regional teams are drawn against each other in these first rounds means that local rivalries reignite and longstanding histories are unearthed and resurrected.
The football itself is incredibly unimportant.
It is how it makes you feel.
Watching Spartans vs Blue Star on that burning summer’s day reminded me how much I love the magic of the FA Cup. It also gets me dreaming of a cup run for our own lads this season.
The Premier League is a fantastic competition, the League Cup is silverware (the most important in the world, our ‘friends’ north of the Tyne would tell you), yet there is something about the FA Cup.
Like non-league football, you feel like you can reach out and touch it. In a world of breakaway leagues and £100 million transfers, there is an undeniable romance to be found in the longest-standing domestic competition.
After all, where else can fans of a Step 5 club sing about their chance to get to Wembley only half ironically?
My thoughts run away with themselves. I begin to dream about winning the cup in our beautiful home shirt, itself a love letter to past success in the competition. The prospect of travelling across the country to clubs you otherwise would never get to play is an admittedly exciting one to football romantics like me.
But whilst these thoughts are fanciful, there is also no reason to count this Sunderland side out.
Last season’s FA Cup campaign was so disappointing because we, as a fanbase, knew that the team was capable of much more. A cup run had been on the cards until one poor performance.
A more protracted run in the League Cup may be more realistic, especially as we now enter a round later as European contenders. Yet I will still live in hope that, ultimately, the magic of the cup is respected.
From grassroots to the professional game, the FA Cup still holds an important place in English football. The romanticism, the history and – most importantly of all – the knowledge that on a cup run anything can happen makes the FA Cup incredibly exciting.
Whilst we are forced to wait for Sunderland’s first appearance until the early months, the qualifying rounds roll on.
If you find yourself at a loose end, why not seek out some non-league FA Cup action?
I promise you’ll find yourself falling in love.
