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THE OLD LADY STILL SHINES LIKE A SUPER-NOVA 24-1-07
Peter Holmes
This weekend sees round four of the FA Cup unfold, the single greatest domestic knockout cup competition on the planet. It is the highlight of the month, especially for all those teams who are still incumbents with a glimmer of hope, and crucially, our glimmer is glowing and we are well in with a shout.
The grand old Duchess of English football still holds a special place in the hearts of all football fans no matter where they originate from or where they live. It conjures up memorable images of epic battles with a history which goes beyond any other. I would go so far to say that the competition is responsible for which team a lot of folks choose to support, especially beyond the shores of Blighty.
Recently certain commentators of the great game have given the FA Cup a bloody good slagging, deriding the competition as inconsequential and effectively lower tier, passé and overshadowed in this iconoclastic Premier league/European Champions league era.
The handling of the brand by the FA itself has not really helped the situation, especially with the stupid decision to play the FA Cup final before the end of the season in 2002. Thankfully, it's back where it belongs, as it should be, the last game on the calendar of an English season.
The blatherers of note made the claim that the FA Cup is now a distraction to the supposed big boys in their quest of Euro glory, that it was effectively damaged by the Manchester United saga in 2000, allowing the club to opt out of the competition to take part in the World Club championship in Brazil. Opining, through their rose-tinted gegs, that the cup had peaked in it's heyday in the late 70's and early 80's.
Then there was the long drawn out Wembley balls up, where the great stadium was destroyed by a wrecking crew, iconic towers and all, with the final shipping out of England to the Welsh national Millennium stadium in Cardiff. Excellent though that stadium may be, with it's sliding roof and superb layout; "We're going to Cardiff!" with all due respect just doesn't carry the evocative spine-tingling hairs on neck wallop of; "We're going to Wembley!" with all it's connotations of history and English pride. In truth, the old stadium was a bit of a dump, paradoxically though it was one of world football's greatest theatres and enduring icons, pre-wrecking ball that is.
Let me tell you, from my half-a-world away vantage point, my perspective is that the great FA Cup is still one of the most evocative, uplifting, exciting, essential and compulsive aspects of the great game, English or otherwise. An opinion shared by numerous millions of expats who look expectantly forward to that day in early May when the world watches but one game.
That one game will be held finally at the new Wembley which is nearing completion after a gestation period that was even longer than the building of the last great pyramid for Pharaoh Yerjokinarnya which was cobbled together during a time prior to modern industrialization when Egypt was beset by plague, pestilence, flooding of the Nile and union trouble led by the famous commie Egyptian red ragger, Arturus Scargilla. Centuries pass but we still need human labour to deliver the dream.
Finally the FA Cup final is back from the nadir to the zenith. At last the greatest single game in the English sporting calendar has an English venue to showpiece it's wares to the watching world. New Wembley returns the luster, the romance, with a fitting theatre to fulfill the dream, which will also see the stadium re-invent itself as one of the greatest venues of world football.
Australia in particular has a huge soft spot for the FA Cup and the nation watches en-masse at various annual get togethers, or should that be rampant uproarious piss-ups? I've been to many an FA Cup final party in twenty-plus years this side of the world and not even been in a fit enough state to see the end of the game.
To explain that, the final kicks off here in West Oz at 10pm at night, so if you are lathering into the sauce mid-afternoon with a few hunks of burnt cow and snaggers with a side helping of rabbit food, you can see that occasionally you can, shall we say, fall by the wayside. In essence it has become an Orstrayan ritual and if people only watch one game of football a year it will be the FA Cup final.
Which other football competition throws together combatants from all ends of the spectrum and has done since 1872. That's a massive part of its enduring and endearing allure, the possibility of an upset and a lesser light prevailing.
There was a collective sharp intake of breath followed by the utterance of a few thousand expletive-deletives the other Tuesday night when Boro saw off a plucky fightback from the tigers of Hull. That game encapsulated what the cup is all about, a lower order minion punching well above its weight and frightening the shit out of the big boys in the process. The competition has a very well documented history of rampant gnashing underdogs biting the balls off some pedigree chump.
That 4-3 scoreline against Hull simply tells me that the Championship side did what it was supposed to do against its more fancied aristocratic neighbour. Correction, they did what they are conditioned to do, ignore the reputations of the elite and go flat out for ninety plus minutes of warfare.
I gleefully look at what Brum did to the largest club in the ionosphere last Wednesday up at Sid James Park in another third round replay. They routed, nae they annihilated the Jardies, who are still living off their last cup win when Alan Shearer's arse was no bigger than a shirt button.
So the Robins of Bristol City await us on Saturday at Ashton Gate, and I would much rather be playing a lower league team at this stage because, as I've stated, that's what this competition is all about.
So get out the silver polish and buff the Old Lady up till she sparkles like a diamond supa-nova, mount her on that famous stand with it's engravings of glory and tie those red and white ribbons round those handles.
You just never know and hope always springs eternal!
Enough said,
ErimusRed.
BACK TO PETER HOLMES' LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA INDEX
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