MY FA CUP RUNNETH OVER

Printed in the Southern League Premier Division game v Weymouth on Tuesday 7th February 2017. We won 3-0 in front of 612 people. 

It's been an FA Cup season to savour. I mean who didn't enjoy watching Manchester United's hard-fought 4-0 win over Wigan Athletic which really captured the magic that the FA and BBC never tire of telling us about, like some drunk bloke at the bar. That's 56 non stop appearances for those Red Devils since 2005 who need that extra exposure so they can flog a few more shirts in some far flung corner of the world to help pay the millions of debt the poisoned dwarfs of America saddled them with. To be fair, the new leader of the opposition Gary Lineker - who somehow has to stop his sides splitting every time some twitter intelligentsia reply 'shat on' to his tweets - pointed out that the BBC wanted to show the Lincoln v Brighton game after Lincoln had beaten an Ipswich side so poor it look as if their players had been run over by a tractor. English football fans would have enjoyed it but their probably ain't a lot of Lincoln fans in the Far East so the FA weren't interested. Of course they dressed it up, with some flannel that it wouldn't have been fair to football fans to move fixtures at short notice! Come again? That's what happens to Brighton everytime they go to kick a ball. 

The Lincoln, Sutton, Oxford United and Wolves victories showed that while it's fine for managers to see how good your fringe players are, these wholesale changes give those players just the sort of confidence boosting shot in the arm they need - losing to lower league opposition. Dress it up how you like, but we all know that for the bigger clubs the FA Cup is just an irritant. I'd have rather gorged out my eyes than watch Brighton play Franchise FC in the 3rd round, which considering how excited I get about the early rounds of the cup, that's saying something. And when I told my eldest that Brighton had been knocked out, he said he didn't care.

The Whole Game Solution wanted to scrap replays which would denied Lincoln and Sutton their 3rd round victories and Plymouth their pay day with 17,000 packing out Home Park against Liverpool's not-quite-good-enoughs. These are the games that bring in new fans as well as a welcome cash boost. 

Football really needs to tell the top teams that it isn't all about them. That there is a thriving, underground  of lower leagues that sometimes pop up on our TV screens but is there every week for those might like to see an actual ball kicked in real life for a sum of money that wont leave your children starving at the dinner table. 
So here's my short manifesto to help improve the FA Cup

* More money to teams winning in the earlier improper qualifying rounds - do the winners really need £1.8 million?
* The team from the lower division always gets to play at home. I'm sure Arsenal players are going to love going to play at Sutton (where incidentally I nearly got crushed to death by former kit-man Jelly when we all piled into the players tunnel after Slough won the Isthmian League at Gander Green Lane in 1981)

* TV money to be evenly spread just not on those picked to be televised (I know, I know this might bankrupt Manchester United).

* More non league clubs to get to play in the first round

* With more places now up for grabs than actual countries in the world, the winners of the FA Cup to be allowed to enter the World Cup

So good luck to Sutton who are proper non league, unlike Lincoln who are one of those clubs who are just waiting to scramble back to the Football League once they've sorted out that faulty component that dumped them into the lower reaches (usually financial mismanagement). Sutton are part time, their manager gets paid nothing (ok, he's financially secure enough to do that, but its not often that very rich people do things for nought) and he doesn't want them to be in the League. Lack of ambition or a sensible bit of realism?

I wouldn't want Slough to be in the Football League either – too many rules and regulations, and its bad enough trying to find your mates at Arbour Park already, now our crowds have more than doubled since the move back into town. But I do want us to be in the Conference South – and get in the 3^rd round of the FA Cup just once in my lifetime. Actually add that the manifesto list. Automatic Bye to the 3^rd round proper of the FA Cup every season to Slough Town.