FA Cup 3rd Round: Best day of the footballing calendar, a distraction from the important stuff and everything in-between.

Over the course of this weekend I have come to realise that the FA Cup means many different things to many different people. To some it is the day where anything can happen, the best day in the calendar, an opportunity for a change of scenery, a break from the norm and the heavily-congested festive league deluge.

It is a day when the surviving plucky minnows who have bested several other minnows of equivalent size in the early rounds (some tiddly minnows have even circumnavigated several encounters with slightly larger fish such to get this far) get to pitch their wits against the salmon of the Championship, or, if they are extremely lucky, they might be relishing and/or quaking in their self-cleaned boots at the prospect of entering an arena against a mighty shark of the Premier League!

The excitement, of course, begins weeks in advance with the draw. It is the afternoon where generic-suited TV presenter and generic-suited ex-professional footballer put numbered balls into a pot and draw those numbered balls in a random order in a fit of extremely banal, extremely soporific television. But despite the extreme boringness of the people performing the draw, and the extreme boringness of the procession that is the draw, many of us watch on with excitement, mouths watering at the prospect of a potentially mouth-watering tie that may reinforce our belief that the FA Cup is in fact, a magic cup.

Generic-suited ex-profressional Sammy Nelson on the day he was alleged to have mixed up the number 24 and the number 25 in probably the biggest draw-day controversy in recent history.

The extremes in reaction to the draw really highlight the differences with which people view the FA Cup these days and it is those extremes I am going to focus on because it is much more fun to do so. At one extreme is the aforementioned plucky minnows sitting huddled around their black and white televisions in various garages and sheds around the country, grateful for the fact that the draw is still on terrestrial television.

Despite their surroundings these plucky chaps have had their best suits dry-cleaned for the occasion as they sit of the edges of their fold-out deck chairs, hearts pounding, fingers crossed, praying that they might fulfil their childhood dreams: a trip to a stadium filled with many more seats than they are used to, where the grass is of uniform height and combed as if it were the hair on David Cameron’s head, buildings with exotic names such as “Old Trafford,” or even better “An-field,” where the changing rooms probably even have hot showers.

Then…that moment arrives…all they can hear is the blood pumping around their brains…generic-suited ex-professional reaches into the pot of numbered balls and says “Number 1.” Generic-suited TV presenter with list helpfully clarifies that number 1 is “Manchester United”…could it be? Bu-bum, bu-bum… “Will play…”… “Number 4,271”... “Ha. That’s The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mechanics, Plasterers and Part-time Accountants Semi-Athletic Football Club Wanderers. Well, what a big day for them!”

It is this moment that really captures the hysteria-ambivalence of the FA Cup. Later, on Sky Sports News you are treated to all the reactions of the different clubs in a round-up of champagne-popping non-plussedness. One camera shot captures an explosion of limbs belonging to mechanics, plasterers and part-time accountants vociferously celebrating the opportunity to play against real-life professional footballers. Later they will admit in interviews that it will be the greatest day of their lives bar none: more important than their wedding day, better than having kids, nothing like it, unbelievable Jeff, whilst their family look on, somewhat wounded by their comments.

By contrast, the next camera shot displays a very different scene. The scene is not a garage full of hysterical plumbers. It is a mild-mannered affair in one of Old Trafford’s several hundred conferencing facilities where Sir Alex Ferguson routinely banquets after vanquishing his enemies. Here there are no players present. They are off lying in post-match flotation tanks before being cryogenically frozen to preserve their 27 year-old ‘peak of their powers’ 0% body fat selves in stasis in preparation for their next titanic struggle with their rival continental, great white shark equivalents.

There is no jumping up and down, no hysteria. Sir Alex Ferguson offers absolutely no glimmer of emotion. He simply jots the name of the team he aims to defeat with as minimal fuss as possible and the date that he will aim to do that on into his burgeoning fixture diary, adjusts his glasses, pops in a fresh chewing gum, stands, tugs the lapels on his 25^th anniversary of being a footballing genius commemorative suit jacket, turns and leaves the room to return to the tactics wing of his success castle. He won’t even waste a thought on the minnows until the big-small, prodigious-insignificant fixture arrives on the first weekend in January. In the meantime he has several substantial Premier League fish to fry whilst accumulating as few injuries and suspensions as possible in an intensive mini-series of squad rotation Masterchef that is the Christmas period.

When the day actually arrives, for the big fish, it is a day of mild inconvenience and damage limitation. The fixture is a potential banana skin, a must avoid impending week of embarrassment, an encounter to avoid shame, ignominy and ridicule in the media, a game that might put them into the history books for all the wrong reasons.

New striker scores a brace for financial behemoths as Chelsea cruise past Premier League opponents Southampton. A day of business-like progression -  no magic, no romance, no fuss, job done.

If they are unlucky enough to have drawn an away fixture, they might be forced to play on a surface more akin to Belgium during the First World War, or the surface of the moon following a sustained meteorite shower, far-removed from the Persian rug their poor players are accustomed to.

That is always one of the most humorous and delightful aspects of the 3^rd round of the FA Cup; seeing the confused and disgruntled look on the face of a Robin Van Persie as the ball he is about to leather into the back of the net that looks like it has been borrowed from a local fishing vessel with all his might whilst uttering “Cashback” under his breath. Instead, the ball cheekily bobbles over a divot and over his million pound golden boot to reveal the look of a man thinking “That divot just cost me 10 grand!...oh well…no biggie.”

For the have-nots, it is a day of destiny! A day that could define history! At least a small chunk of the history of a small chunk of their lives, and an even smaller chunk of the history of their small club that may or may not be bankrupt by the end of the season. But on the day it feels so much more than that. It is a day on which nothing else matters. It offers the chance to bring low one of the greatest football clubs in the history of the world! A chance to test one’s mettle against the select few who have been anointed “world-class” by none other than Paul Merson.

The Macc Lads, post-giantkilling . Runaway Championship leaders defeated by mid-table conference no-hopers. This classic 'cupset' will live in the memories for perhaps up to three seasons.

It is a chance to change an entire town from a drab recession-blighted shedhole into a place of unbridled joy, of magic FA Cup ecstasy, a party town for one day. It is a chance for one moment of FA Cup glory that may be remembered by football fans up and down the country for at least a couple of seasons, one night of head-exploding joy, 2 ½ minutes on ITV’s highlights show that has been sky plussed by one of your full-time accountant mates that actually has Sky+ with the sports package. But he will never have this:  a chance of becoming an immortal, an FA Cup giant killer, the main protagonist in the hugely annoying play on words that is “a cupset” of biblical proportions, a day when hope springs eternal.

To sum up, it is the fact that the FA Cup can mean such different things to so many different fans and players that make it an interesting, entertaining and relevant competition. Regardless of the outcomes of the fixtures, it still offers opportunities for David to slay Goliath and it is them having that opportunity that is important, not whether the Champions League teams take it seriously enough, or whether people care as much about it as they used to. It is so rare to see the big teams squirming uncomfortably in their surroundings in a sort of lose-lose, do we really care? No, but in a way, yes, let’s just get through this bubble of vulnerability whilst the rest of the country revels in a sort of win-win, let’s have a bloody good day out, sing ‘til our throats are raw, put it up ‘em bubble of hopes and dreams.

When all is said and done, most of the swimmers make it through, but there are always, always and few that get caught up in the net and are devoured in a frenzied, piranha-like, non-league football feast. And for those victorious against the odds, it is a special weekend. For those defeated and humiliated at the hands of so-called ‘lesser opposition’, they can still return home with their pride slightly dented, tails between their legs, bemoaning that penalty decision, or the missed one-on-one, and once there is enough distance between themselves and the unbearably embarrassing occasion, they can console themselves with “Well…at least we can focus on the league.”