This season therealfacup has tried to ‘big up’ the FA Cup, the early rounds, the ties, the teams and the players of the teams we’ve been destined to see. We were doing this because we thought all smaller football clubs were better, or at least more wholesome, than larger clubs. And we thought that the masses should see more of it and that the smaller clubs would want to be seen.

It’s been an eye opener for sure, we’ve encountered some good folk and watched some good football. We hadn’t set out to learn anything from this we just wanted to get back in touch with a world of football not dominated by money and player power and maybe give the good stuff we saw a small helping hand along the way. But we did learn something and bits of that something baffled us slightly.

We know small clubs are very poorly supported and that is partly because ‘fans’ are only interested in the big clubs. It is also true that national media isn’t that interested in lower league football. However, it’s also clear that part of the problem is that lower league clubs have absolutely no understanding of how to market themselves.

We have been to 18 games, we have seen 31 different teams, 26 of which have been outside the top four divisions. We have been greeted warmly by the vast majority of teams but few actively embraced the fact we were trying to help them and bring them to a bigger audience. OK, that sounds ludicrously patronising and we aren’t exactly the BBC but you get our drift, we do get a few hits!

We couldn’t understand why many clubs seemed not to want the extra coverage they might get from us interviewing their star player or manager or writing about their game. We couldn’t understand why these clubs weren’t obeying the natural and insatiable rules of football and the media.

But, hey, big news, some of them didn’t want the coverage, they didn’t want the money, they didn’t want big shot players, they didn’t want bells, whistles or gold teeth. It turned out they just wanted to play football! That is not bizarre, it is perfectly normal. That is what we were looking for and we found it. And we got annoyed with it. And we wanted to turn it into the very thing we wanted to get away from. The thing we were disillusioned with.

Doh!

WE ARE SORRY.

Having said that … Not all clubs were happy being sleepy backwaters, some are very ambitious and we came across several who were. And, to be brutally honest, they weren’t ogres desperate to sup from Murdoch’s golden cup, they just wanted better, or more. Are we hypocrites to like those teams too? Probably but bring it on. With disillusionment still in place but a few scales removed from our eyes, expect more erratic blogging and even more erratic opinion.

aLL uR fOotBalL R BEloNg tO Us.