The FA Cup is where football started for me. As a nine-year-old, the complexities of a league season perplexed me, but the simple purity of a knock-out competition excited me and in 1989, I sat in my front room and cheered on Liverpool playing a poignant final against Merseyside rivals, Everton in the shadow the Hillsborough disaster. I’d chosen John Barnes as my favourite player. He’d been one of the first Panini stickers that I’d unwrapped and his smiling face beamed back at me. It could have been Roy Wegerle or Francis Benali that emerged from that packet, but thankfully, it was Barnes and for the next few years, he was a masterful player, the driving force behind Liverpool’s excellence and on that late 80s May day, he was important as Liverpool finally dispatched Everton 3-2 after extra time.
Years on, it was the early rounds of the cup that fascinated me and I think the first FA Cup match I ever attended was a trip to Canvey Island to see Brighton scrap out a 2-2 draw. Despite the fact that an under-achieving Brighton flirting with their very existence had absolutely no chance of reaching the final didn’t mean that the match didn’t carry the magic of the cup, the link between this First Round fixture and the Wembley showpiece giving the match a glittery glow.
Today, I went back even further, to the Extra Preliminary Round. 348 teams were competing up and down the country, playing in simple settings in front of modest crowds, but the glittery glow that captured my nine-year-old heart was at each one - just thirteen rounds from the showpiece final. My location, of course, was Saltdean United’s Hill Park. My reignited relationship with Saltdean had started at this stage last season when the Tigers had started the season off with defeat at the hands of Eastbourne Town. This time round, they faced Frimley Green who were making their way down from Surrey. The winner of the game would scoop £1,125 prize money (the eventual winner gets £1.8 million), but more importantly the magical hope lingers on for whoever would triumph. It would take a club six consecutive victories to get to the First Round Proper where they might face a league side and eight victories to be in with a chance of playing one of the Premier League big boys. The best Saltdean have ever done is four victories, taking them to them Third Qualifying Round in 2001. Few sides from tier nine make it all the way to the First Round Proper, but last season, Skelmersdale United, from the same level as Saltdean, made it all the way through the six matches before losing to League Two side, Harrogate Town. Could this season be Saltdean’s turn? They’re in the strongest place they’ve ever been, so now is as good a time as any for magic-time at Hill Park.
First things first though, they needed to overcome Frimley Green in the oblique August rain. I invited a friend and his son along for the game and it was the son’s first ever football game and he was properly excited, asking his dad when the game was starting on repeat four hours before kick-off. Would he be catch the magic?
Saltdean delivered exactly what a seven-year-old needs at their first football game with an early goal, Reece Hallard climbing high to head home, adding to his goals from midweek. Shortly afterwards, Tom Caplin was clumsily bundled over in the box and the referee pointed to the spot. The game could have got away from the Green at this point, but Callum Sauders’ penalty, whilst struck well, was at what is always described by commentators as a “good height for the keeper” and it was batted away and this shifted the tide of the game and as Frimley enjoyed a spell of pressure, my children and my friend’s child took advantage of a break in the rain to climb the bank to the children’s pitches situated slightly higher up the valley. They missed Frimley shooting themselves in the foot and feet are pretty important when it comes to football. Their captain, Bradley Pegg, flew into a attempted tackle with two missile-like feet. He made contact with the ball which was what the Frimley bench repeatedly shouted, but this didn’t prevent the referee from applying the rules and whipping out a red card in a fabulously flamboyant manner. He charged into the melee like a male peacock keen to flash its feathers to any females in the vicinity. He was all arms, synchronising his limbs for a brief fluttery motion before aiming one to delve into his pocket and produce a flash of red. It was only 1-0, but Saltdean had a man advantage as well as the wind and the rain behind them for the second half.
Half-time allowed the children to scamper onto the football pitch, a treat that won’t be available in every round of the cup although it would be lovely, wouldn’t it?, if at half-time in the FA Cup final at Wembley, all the children were allowed to scamper about on the hallowed turf, re-enacting what they’d just sent their heroes do.
The meteorological, numerical and to be honest, footballing ability advantage proved to be more markedly decisive in the second half. Reece Hallard lashed in a second, Trevor McCreadie slapped it into the top corner for a third and Callum Saunders made up for his penalty miss by completing a comfortable 4-0 victory.
And so, on we go, beyond the Extra Preliminary Round to the Preliminary Round where we face Sheppey United and I’m ruing my holiday booking which not only means I miss the next round of the cup, but also means I miss four other Saltdean matches in this packed early-season schedule. But I’ll be back and hopefully, Saltdean will have continued to have scored freely and not conceded in my absence.
