January 22nd, 2004

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Sports
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The FA Cup Rocks

Is there a better league competition in all of sports? Basically, it’s a football (er, soccer) tournament in which teams from any level of professional and semi-professional in British English (thanks, Chris) soccer can compete. I’m a little sketchy on how a team qualifies, but it means that, on rare occasions, tiny, underdog teams can play against the nation’s very best.

This year’s example is the tiny Scarborough playing the massively huge and wealthy Chelsea. To put this into Canadian hockey terms, this is the equivalent of the Merritt Centennials playing the New York Rangers. They playing at the Scarborough home ground, capacity 6,500 (Chelsea’s pitch, by comparison, can host about eight times that). The underdog will no doubt get their butts served to them with a mouthful of turf, but what a thrill to play against their heroes.

A fringe benefit is that Scaraborough will make a mint on television rights, providing financial security for the club for years.

Comments: 5 Responses so far

John Keyes
January 23rd, 2004
2:34 am

There are a number of regional qualifying events that take place to gain right of entry to the next phase. I think there are 4 qualifying rounds (though there are also some preliminary qualifying rounds). At the end of this phase there are 32 non-league teams (amatuer/semi-professional) who are entered in the first round proper.

The third round is where the Premiership and 1st Division clubs join. They are joined by the 20 round 2 winning teams.

There have been some “giant killings” down through the years but the two of most talked about are when Hereford Utd. (amatuers) beat Newcastle Utd. (Division 1 Champions which is the equivalent to the Premiership nowadays) in the early 70’s and when Wrexham (3rd Division) beat Arsenal (Division 1 Champions) in 1992.

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Chris Cheetham
January 23rd, 2004
1:05 pm

This is probably just me being picky but…. I understand you wont all be familiar with the rules of the FA Cup but its only open to teams playing within English leagues not British(Scottish and Welsh clubs arent allowed to enter, though some Welsh teams such as Cardiff, who compete in the English leagues are allowed to enter). It is one of out few sporting gems left pretty much untouched down the years. One of the big games this weekend is on a similar scale to Chelsea v Scarborough. Its Man Utd v Northampton at their ground. Its drawn quite a lot of interest because thirty or so years ago Man Utd trounced them 8-2 with a legendary player, George Best scoring 6 of the Man Utd goals. Man Utd still being several divisions above Northampton are expected to trounce them but with the magic of the cup its got a lot of people talking this one up as a potential classic.

I guess we’ll know if anyone called the upset correctly come Sunday evening

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harp
January 26th, 2004
11:12 am

Scarborough only lost 1-0, and the ref missed a Chel$ki handball too. Man, is that Scarborough ground ever small, it’s smaller than Swanguard!

And just for playing one of the bigger sides on TV, you can pocket half a million pounds if I’m not mistaken. But yeah, the magic of the cup is great…it sucks when your team is a bigger side and there’s potential humiliation on the cards when your side is playing minnows if you lose. My Liverpool side barely got by a third division Yeovil Town earlier this month.

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Jermaine George
March 9th, 2004
6:11 am

My names as above and i was wondering if you had any info about a non-league team looking for a friendly against a group of talented footballers from Bournemouth/Portsmouth…
We will be in Cardiff on the 3rd of April and are looking for a friendly for the 4th.

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Andy
May 17th, 2006
10:16 am

You should also cross out English and put English/Welsh instead. Wrexham, Swansea and Cardiff compete in the FA Cup.

P.S. Why are Chelsea, Scarorough’s heroes?

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