If Colchester United become the 18th giant felled by Altrincham in Sunday’s FA Cup second-round tie, Lee and Jordan Sinnott will cement the family name in the non-league club’s famous history in the competition.
Lee, Altrincham’s manager, and his son Jordan, a ball-playing midfielder, have already helped slay League One opposition this season, with a 1-0 win over Barnsley in the first round at Moss Lane.
Altrincham may be a part-time operation who started the weekend 18th in the Vanarama National League but no professional club wants to hear their name drawn as their next FA Cup opponent. Barnsley became league victim No17 thanks to a combination of the right attitude and a willingness to keep to the style demanded by the manager. This is the strategy Colchester, who are in transition after the manager Tony Humes departed 10 days ago, will have to negate on Sunday too.
As Sinnott Jr says: “You stick to your game-plan, you go about your business the way the gaffer tells you to, how he wants you to play. You always up your game, especially against a league team, and you need that bit of luck like I felt we had in the first round.”
The “gaffer” is Jordan’s father, of course. He signed for him in February after leaving Huddersfield Town, for whom he was a substitute in the league twice, while also making six loan appearances at Altrincham and 10 with Bury.
Both father and son are careful to keep their football relationship professional. Jordan had to win through a trial before Sinnott decided to take him to the Robins on a permanent basis.
“He treated me like any other player that was coming in and looking to sign for the club,” Sinnott Jr says. “I didn’t expect it or want it any other way.”
His father concurs: “He’s just another player. He wouldn’t be at this club if he couldn’t do a job because that’s on my head then – I’m very straight on the line in how I manage. Yes, he carries the same surname as the gaffer, but when he first came to the club I referred to him as No26 because it has to be that way. It’s harder for him because everyone judges him.”
There is, though, scope for banter. The 21-year-old Sinnott Jr shares the same moniker his father acquired during his playing days as a tough defender. “I joined Huddersfield when I was 15 and one of my coaches slaughtered me with my dad’s nickname – from that I got ‘Sinbad’,” he says. “My old man keeps hammering me, saying: ‘Get your own nickname’.”
Altrincham may be only eight points above the Conference relegation zone but their first-round victims, Barnsley, are bottom of League One, and Colchester only two points better off.
Sinnott Jr is taking nothing for granted, however.“It will be a tough game, with them being a league side, I think it’ll be very similar to Barnsley,” he says. “Their league form is not far off. We’ll be the underdogs again and hopefully we can cause another upset. I don’t see why not. If we play the ball like we can, getting it down, passing it and hopefully cause them a few problems, you never know with the Cup. Anything can happen, like it did in the last round.”
And as it did on the 16 previous occasions before then when Altrincham shocked league opponents. Tranmere were the first, in 1921-22. Then came Rochdale (65-66), Hartlepool (73-74), Scunthorpe (74-75), Crewe and Rotherham (79-80), Scunthorpe (80-81), Sheffield United and York (81-82), Rochdale (82-83), Blackpool (84-85 and 85-86), Birmingham (85-86), Lincoln (88-89), Chester (92-93), and Wigan (94-95).
It is a remarkable string of scalps. From 1979 to 1982 Altrincham reached the third round four times. In 1975 and 1979 third-round replays were forced with Everton and Tottenham Hotspur. Yet before last month’s win over Barnsley 21 years had passed since their last giant-killing, when the Latics were knocked out with a 1-0 win, so the Sinnotts can be proud of helping the club to end the wait.
At Colchester the manager will again tap into this heritage. “Yes, but we won’t go overboard with it. The previous one [giantkilling] was in the mid-90s which shows how prolific the club was because they still hold the record for knocking out league clubs,” he says.
Sinnott amassed 613 appearances in all competitions in an 18-year professional career with Bradford, Huddersfield and Watford among others, and played all 90 minutes of Watford’s 2-0 FA Cup final defeat by Everton in 1984, though memories of that May day are hazy.
“You have snippets of it – snippets of the build-up, not so much the action,” Sinnott says. “I’ve seen a tape of the game – a couple of things stand out. When you walk up the tunnel of the old Wembley, it was quite a fair tunnel, and you couldn’t see the pitch until halfway. And when we walked out half an hour before I felt more nervous than I did for the actual game.”
He will, similarly, be encouraging his side to be brave against the U’s on Sunday. “It’s up to the players to make sure they go for it. Give it a go, in the right controlled manner. We’re not going to be like the Californian gold rush, try to score five or six goals. They’ve done it against Barnsley,” he says. “This club is no lover of reputations.”
