In an ever-changing game in an ever-changing world, there is something wonderfully reassuring about the FA Cup. Even its language has a quasi-liturgical permanence. Every year the football writers tell us about the “romance” and “magic” of the cup, which is “a great leveller”. Feats of “giant-killing” are performed against “goliaths” by “minnows”, a word first identified by The Guardian as a cliche in 1961. (Quite how minnows are meant to do this is unclear; food poisoning, presumably.)
And these ritual incantations have had a fine old workout these past few weeks, even before minnows Lincoln beat goliaths Burnley to become the first non-league team since 1914 to reach the tournament’s last eight. Whatever happens next, the 9,000 Lincoln supporters allotted tickets for the next game at Arsenal on 11 March will have a splendid day out. Beating Arsenal? That would be a “fairytale”.
But these lower-division successes, like once-a-century storms and floods, are now getting more frequent. Already this decade, Bradford City have reached the final of the League Cup and the last eight of the FA Cup. Four years ago, Luton, then also outside the league, knocked Norwich out of the Premier League.
It would be good simply to celebrate the joy of all this. But just as unusually early daffodils can be simultaneously delightful while portending uncomfortable truths about climate change, these unexpected results also say something much less fairytale-ish about football.
This season’s other over-achievers, Sutton United, whose own FA Cup run was ended by Arsenal last Monday, immediately found themselves immersed in a scandalette when their reserve goalkeeper – 20-stone Wayne Shaw, AKA the “roly-poly goalie”, ostentatiously ate a pie on the subs’ bench during the Arsenal match.
Shaw had previously been in line for elevation to temporary status as a national treasure, or at least a listed building. However, the pie-eating appeared to be connected to a bet offered by a firm called Sun Bets – a company itself connected to a well-known newspaper that is not averse to stunts. These novelty bets are not part of mainstream bookmaking, but are funded by the marketing departments. Shaw has now left Sutton, and multiple investigations are under way. Fifteen minutes of fame should always be handled with care.
When analysing the shock results themselves, one also has to follow the money. Sutton got to the last 16 by beating Leeds, who put out their second team. Leeds’s priority this season is to climb back on to the Premier League gravy train after 13 years’ absence; the FA Cup was a much less lucrative distraction. The exits of Liverpool, Newcastle and Brighton all have similar explanations.
The football historian David Goldblatt remembers Billy Bremner, the great Leeds terrier of the 60s and 70s, saying that if he had not won the FA Cup his career would have been incomplete. “You couldn’t imagine anyone saying that now with any degree of earnestness. The top players think of it as a bit of an afterthought. The financial differences are so stark compared to the League, there’s no comparison.”
This can also be seen as a product of English football’s globalisation. Whereas every homegrown, jumpers-for-goalposts kid used to fantasise above all about climbing the steps and lifting the Cup, this has far less resonance abroad, where the Premier League is everything. “The cup has never meant anything like as much in other footballing countries,” says Goldblatt. “In Italy, it’s hardly taken seriously at all.”
Foreign players and fans are not steeped in the mystique, and cup final day no longer clears the shopping centres the way it once did. Only the BBC, clinging desperately to one of the last baubles in its denuded sporting treasury, still hypes it all up as though it was 1973.
English football is also more mobile than it once was. Clubs can now rise and, above all, fall, like characters in a Dickens novel. Goliaths are turned into minnows, and sometimes vice versa, depending primarily on the ownership. It matters not whether the self-appointed saviour, jetting in to proclaim undying devotion to a team he has only just been told about, is a money-launderer, a property speculator or an egomaniac. The question, which only gets answered with time, is whether he plans to inject money or extract it. Disaster is a constant threat – ask any Leeds supporter.
Luton were once above Norwich in the pecking order. In 1960, Burnley were champions of England. In 1987, they were not just languishing in the depths of the old fourth division, but had to win their final match to stay in the league at all. They did win, and the team they sent down instead was Lincoln. Now they are big-time again. So the whole notion of giant-killing has become muddied.
Burnley were trying harder than most last week. Seemingly safe from relegation, but with no higher ambitions, the FA Cup might have been up their street. But even if Lincoln do go on and win the final – an outcome more improbable even than Leicester becoming champions – there will still be an underlying sense that fairytales are not what they were. (And on this week’s evidence, their manager, Danny Cowley, will have to watch his back.).
The greatest of them all happened in 1972: Hereford United of the southern league v Newcastle, not with their reserves but at full power, complete with Malcolm Macdonald, the Wayne Rooney of his day. It was Hereford 2, Newcastle 1, after much drama (the match even has its own Wikipedia page). Journalist and Hereford fan Tom Knight was on the terraces as a 16-year-old that day. “Nothing really ever happened in Hereford,” he recalls now. “Then we thought we were suddenly part of the world, the world where things happen.”
Four decades later, Hereford went bust after falling into the hands of sugar daddies who turned sour. Last season, the successor club were in a league so low they were playing villages: not just minnows, but plankton. They are slowly climbing again. Well-intentioned benefactors welcome.
