The Magic Of The FA Cup

 

The Magic of the FA Cup

The first FA Cup final I vaguely remember was 1975 when West Ham beat Fulham 2-0. I also have vague memories of 1976, but it’s from 1977 onwards, when I was 8, that FA Cup magic hit me. In recent times, maybe even the past 20 years the ‘magic’ of the Cup has been diminished somewhat, although us the fans, still love it as much as ever. Below are my views as to what has changed and why the Cup is just another game to some.

Television

TV is the major player in sport these days; the amount of money thrown at the game makes it what it is, truly massive and global. I can’t comment for certain about how many live games were on TV in England pre 1977 but around then we had a total of 3 live games each year guaranteed and the odd extra England live game if we were lucky. The rest of our coverage was from highlights and that was limited (the role of TV in sport will be another blog entry). The games that were live were the FA Cup Final, England v Scotland at either Wembley or Hampden Park and the European Cup Final; these three games were in an 8 day period in May. The FA Cup Final being shown on both BBC and ITV.

With the FA CUP final being the first live game of the three, excitement round the country was huge. BBC1 would cut Swap Shop short and at 11-15 Grandstand would start. We didn’t have Videos, PVR’s etc so we either watched it live or not at all.

From memory the running of the show was as listed below. It may have changed slightly year on year. In between a few of the items there were usually 2 or 3 horse races as well.

• Interviews with the players at the teams’ hotels
• Cup Final edition of Question of Sport
• The Road to Wembley
• On the Coach with the teams coming to Wembley
• The players sampling the atmosphere
• Abide with me
• Players meeting Royalty
• Game
• Presentation of the trophy
• Highlights of the Scottish Cup Final

That was 6 hours dedicated to the Cup Final almost exclusively.

Fast Forward to 2014 and that has now been cut dramatically, and whilst not everyone has Pay TV or access to it, there are now 154 league games alone shown live on UK TV. Therefore the FA Cup Final does become just another game to many neutral fans.

The Schedule

In years gone by, the first Saturday in January, FA Cup 3rd round day. Possibly the best weekend of football, loads of games, upsets, drama and it all unfolded on the radio or via the teleprinter on Grandstand. If you were at the game and your team drew you were busy planning how to get tickets (often not needed) or the trip to the replay on the Tuesday or Wednesday. And if that game was drawn the same thing happened time after time. Now we get one replay and penalties, something else that has taken the gloss off the Cup.

Now on a Saturday, we get very few games played involving the big teams, approximately half the games are moved to other days, again for TV and convenience for police and authorities. The games being played over a longer period has spoiled what was a great day for many.

Importance

With so much emphasis now on the league, getting promoted, avoiding relegation, CL qualification, all due to the financial side of the game, a lot of clubs choose to rest players, and play virtually a B team in the Cup. When fans go to a game and don’t see their main players the whole competition is devalued.

In 1999 Manchester Utd were ‘exempted’ from entering the Cup to go on a money spinning competition in South America. To me this was the start of the downfall of the cup, a top team, backed by the governing body letting a team miss it to make money.

Wembley

Playing at Wembley should be the pinnacle of fans and players season, by having the Semi Finals at Wembley and obviously on separate days, another bit of the appeal has gone.

Arsenal won their first competition in 9 years on Saturday, the joy showed by the players, and more importantly the fans, has been immense. I think the Clubs, TV companies and the authorities should do all they can to ensure that the oldest Cup competition in the World rekindles its magic and goes back, in some ways, to what it was.

The first change to get the cup back on track, is to have it kicking off at 3:00pm, and ensure it doesn’t move from the week after the league season finishes.