Sutton United 0 Staines 1

Essentially, this game can be summed up in one word. Dull. More appropriately it can be encapsulated in a sentence. Staines scored in the first minute, there was a scuffle just before half time that resulted in red, the woodwork was struck and Sutton could perhaps have equalised. That’s yer lot.

Bye then. But, there’s something we meant to do a while ago and this affords us the perfect chance to do so. A Tale Of Two Uniteds by Jeff Perkins was handed to us in a brown paper bag (well, white plastic) by an undercover Sutton operative in exchange for good copy (not really, I still owe him a pint).

The book is a piece of history, your dad will remember it. It’s the story not only of the biggest game of Leeds United’s history against mighty Sutton in the 4th round of the FA Cup in 1970 but it is so, so much more. OK, like us, Jeff is quite probably not the most stylish or verbose writer you’ll ever read and, let’s face it, the story here is very niche. However, this is one of the most genuine books you’ll ever read. It is, on the whole a thoroughly engaging and heartfelt book. At times it dwells too much on minutae to be totally fluid but it is also a cracking document of not only a moment in time but the people involved in it.

The book, classically, sets the scene, leads up to the main event and introduces you to the characters through historical document and modern day interview. It uncovers the emotions experienced by the underdog protagonists and discovers what they went on to do afterwards. It draws you in to the world of the footballer, the non-league footballer and the fan.

Whether deliberately or by happenstance, what this book does beautifully is illustrate the VAST gulf between players of yore and today. It also hints at why these people played football for enjoyment, rather than pursuing fame or money. In short, it’s what non-league football was, and in some ways still is, about, in comparison to probably the best team in England at the time.

I was familiar with no more than a couple of the Sutton men, for they were men, involved but what came across was what you and I think when we play football. It’s fun, it’s a game.

As far we’re aware this book can only be obtained via the Sutton United website here – but, if anyone knows otherwise, please let us know.

A Tale Of Two Uniteds by Jeff Perkins £6.95

We’ve got our own ideas who should win but we want your suggestions too, we’ve been to lots of games but they are only a tiny fraction of games played.  So, leave comments here, email us at the address on the home page or Tweet us your opinion, we’ve already had a couple of suggestions …

Everton: Tweeter grandoldteam argued that the Toffees should win it “Because of our run last season (Liverpool, Villa, Man Utd en route…) only to fall at the last hurdle.” While we all would have fancied that being the actual result, it is still last season. Sorry, no.

Stoke City: Ilkeston Town fan @ilson_fan reasoned that the winners should be “Stoke. They beat York who beat Cambridge who beat the mighty Ilkeston so they must be REALLY good!”  That is compelling but we can’t have a Premier Lge team winning The Real FA Cup.

So what do we want you to bear in mind, who has been the nicest, most helpful club, who’s had the best team, scored the best goals, embodied the FA Cup spirit, had the best sense of humour, perhaps it was where you simply had the best day out, maybe it’s the team who has played the most games or got the furthest from where they started, or perhaps you think your local team should win?  Whichever of these is your reason, let us know and we’ll consider it.

Yes, we know that Forest Green are still in the Cup, we know there are some League 1 sides still in but they are going to have to go some to have the impact that some already have and, frankly, the mainstream coverage of the tournament is getting quite depressing. The Real has gone, hyperreal has arrived.  Obviously, we’re looking to our non-league followers to step up to the plate here but our short list is:

AFC Wimbledon | Aylesbury | Basildon Utd |Chelmsford City | Dartford | Lowestoft Town | Sutton Utd | Tooting & Mitcham | Wealdstone |

Who else should be on it – and why?

While my better half contemplates the purchase of a Daimler, A DAIMLER FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!, or perhaps a convertible from the newly dead Saab Group, I have been pondering what glamour the season has held for fans of the teams we saw in the 1^st Qualifying Round.  I went to quite glamorous Farnborough, a cracking game, while globetrotting (I’m not bitter) Simon went to Horsham, which was not so hot, apparently. I would post links to the match reports but they seem to have disappeared and the technical part of this outfit is AWOL. Google ‘therealfacup’ and ‘[insert team name here]’.

Of the three Ryman 1 South sides we’ve come across so far, Horsham YMCA are, unfortunately for them, doing the worst. But only just. They sit just below the Met Police, who we saw in the previous round, and just above the drop zone. I think it’s kindest to say that it has been an unremarkable season for YM so far. Towards the end of November they picked up four points that took them clear of the drop zone and this was largely down to new signing former Italian international Tony Di Bernardo saving three penalties in two games. Before you go searching, the bit about being an international is not true.

East Grinstead were vanquished by YM in the 1st Qualifying Round of the FA Cup, perhaps not unsurprisingly given their presence down the pyramid in Sussex League Division 1. And, like YM, they are just four points above the relegation zone. Symmetry. But it’s been a bizarre season to say the least. Despite having won but five league games, the Wasps have pestered their opponents goal on at least four goals in every single one of those wins! They have also twice racked up a five fer and twice netted a half dozen in winning games. It’s not as if they don’t know where the onion sack is.

Both of the six goal hauls were in the Sussex Senior Cup, including one quite remarkable game at home to Chichester City. Having lost 7-1 at Chichester on the opening day of the season, revenge was in the air. I couldn’t do the game justice so check out the review on the Wasps website, link on links page. The Wasps went behind early, then turned it round to lead 2-1. Chichester then equalised before the Wasps went 3-2 and 4-2 up before being pegged back to 4-3 by half time. In the second half East Grinstead went 5-3 up before Chichester were reduced to ten men and then somehow pulled it back to 5-5. EGT scored the game’s eleventh goal with 15 minutes still to go, the only surprise was that there were no more goals! 6-5 final score!

Another team with little trouble scoring this season are Farnborough, although they also have  considerably fewer problems  winning them than Grinstead. Farnborough top of the Zamaretto Premier with a GD of +26 and 3 games in hand over 2nd place Brackley, of whom they are already five points clear. Four of their forwards are in double figures for the season and they have even managed to rack up a 7 in one game. They haven’t scored as heavily as the Wasps but they have racked up an impressive number of goals in total and have gone about their business of winning games with about a 90% success rate thus far.

Farnborough have been miserly with defeats, they’ve lost just three times this season but twice to teams above them in the pyramid. Salisbury beat them in the FA Cup and Newport in the FA Trophy. However, home defeat to Nuneaton just a couple of weeks ago might have put some cats among a few pigeons. Although 8 points behind, Nuneaton lie 4th and have games in hand on the two teams between them and the leaders. So, they are ‘Boro’s most likely challengers for top spot. Farnborough are, however, a team who want to go places. A big new stand nearly finished, goal celebration music, an electronic scoreboard and a very much bigger time attitude. I think they might appreciate the Daimler.

Hastings gave Farnborough a very real run for their money. This shouldn’t be such a surprise because, although they had started the season indifferently they had won four on the spin before the tie. They are currently 2nd in the Ryman Premier League but they have played more gamed than those below them. In fact if the five teams below them win their many games in hand, the Arrows would slip to 7th. Unlikely though that is they are all miles behind Dartford who have won 14 of 17 games, losing just once.

Right, I’m off to stop someone doing something they’ll regret and then blame me for at a later date.

Next time … Wingate & Finchley, Aylesbury FC, Hampton & Richmond Borough and Braintree.

This catch up is for teams we watched in the Preliminary Round.  Chertsey, the Met Police, Sevenoaks and our local boys Dulwich Hamlet. Hamlet and the Fuzz were victorious in these games but neither went much further, both losing narrowly away to meagre opposition and neither getting far in the FA Trophy. Chertsey, on the other hand are in with a very good chance of getting a long way in the FA Vase.

Despite Chertsey’s good run and the fact we’re feeling dead Christmassy now, part two of our half term report continues with shuddering recollections of the stultifying tedium of the first ever Friday night game at Alwyns Lane. Sampled by just one regular realfacupster, Chertsey .v. The Rozzers of the Met bore all the hallmarks of classic lower league fayre. The game time changed, not on police advice but with police acceptance.  You couldn’t go much further up the pyramid and still find a game moved because one of the players was getting married on the Saturday, that stuff waits until the end of the season.  The game was, however, dire.

Chertsey though are full of Christmas cheer too now. Into the 4th round of the FA Vase, 3rd in the Combined Counties Premier League where the Curfews have lost just once at home and are on a run of 8 wins in 11. The Met, meanwhile, find themselves a bit more cheerless. They usually find themselves at the higher end of mid table in Ryman 1 South but this season they find themselves in the lower half having won just 2 of their last 10 games. One of their main problems of late has been scoring.  The talismanic Frankie Sawyer is still top scorer having rattled in 5 league goals from just 7 starts and 3 late surges from the bench during the early season.  However, Frankie left the club some months ago and they’ve struggled to score since.

The Met’s loss has been Dulwich Hamlet’s gain, although in terms of goals only very recently.  Sawyer left the Met to head up Champion Hill, where he has taken time to settle but has now got his first goals. Like the fuzz, Hamlet have a tendency to be at the business end of Ryman 1 South’s mid-table-ness but find themselves a little off the pace after an up and down first half to the season.

A few points above the Met, Gavin Rose’s new young team had a run of five successive draws in October that showed they were becoming difficult to beat but their 3 wins and 3 defeats since then suggest they haven’t quite got the hang of both preventing goals and scoring themselves in the same game. However, the high point so far is that two of those three wins have been in the last two weeks and Sawyer has started scoring.

The low point came in early November in the London Senior Cup when, at home to South Kilburn of the Hellenic League some 4 levels lower down the pyramid, Hamlet contrived to lose 2-1 in a game some at the club were calling their worst result ever.   Since though they have now finally won at home, which they hadn’t yet done this season and Rose is now talking of a promotion push. It’s a long shot because they are probably going to have to win 18 of their remaining 22 games to stand a chance.

Finally, we visited Sevenoaks’ quirky ground on the first chilly night of the year. We say chilly but the kind of chilly that requires a hoody, not the kind of chilly that currently grips the nation in it’s icy fist.  Sevenoaks lie 3^rd in the Bulmers Cider Kent League Premier Division but way off runaway leaders Faversham.  With the league position and Billy Shinners rattling in the goals at a heavy rate, it’s surprising that a town the size of Sevenoaks is attracting an average of just 64 paying fans per league game. That’s probably about a third of Hamlet’s who have far more competition for fans’ hard earned.

If you’re a fan of any of these teams and we’ve missed some notable yarns from the seasons, stick them in the commenst below or mail us. Next time, the first qualifying round.

Best game so far? Probably AFC Wimbledon 3 Crawley Town 1, with AFC down to ten men and seemingly out they raised the bar, raised their game and put a shell-shocked Crawley to the sword. Notable mention also for Broxbourne Borough V&E 1 Enfield 1893 4, a game where the quality exceeded the apparent lowly status of the teams present.

Through the Christmas and New Year period, before the Cup kicks off again, we’re going to look back, briefly, round-by-round, at the games we’ve been to and see how the teams we’ve seen have fared since we saw them.

Extra Preliminary Round:

Since we visited Wembley FC on that lovely sunny summer day things have been a bit rocky for them. The cup defeat didn’t initially seem to affect them too much and they won their next 2 league games. However, after those games they lost 9 on the bounce, only halting the run with a draw at home to Sandhurst Town before then going on to lose 2 more. For most of that run the Lions’ pride have been bereft of realfacup interview star Andy Walker through injury.

Despite this tawdry run, they last week managed a jaw-dropping, and perhaps season-turning, 5-4 home victory over Raynes Park Vale that lifted them off the bottom. Despite the rank results in the league, Wembley managed 4 rounds in the FA Vase beating Wootton Blue Cross, St Margaresbury and Langford before crashing out to Hoddesdon in round 2.

Basildon United, on the other hand, currently lie 6th in the Essex Senior League. Although victorious in this round of the FA Cup, Basildon lost 3-0 away at Erith in the Preliminary Round so their cup was fairly short lived this time round. An indifferent November has cost them because they were at one point level with leaders Burnham Ramblers but have now slipped 5 points behind. Any promotion is going to be tricky as the leaders and teams around the Bees have games in hand.

Runners up in both of the last two seasons, eternal bridesmaids Enfield 1893 find themselves in familiar territory just a few points off the top. They are just above Basildon on goal difference and are currently best placed to catch the leaders. After Enfield had taken their landlords, Broxbourne, to pieces their season stagnated a little but has really picked up in recent weeks. Since they lost 5-0 to league leaders Bethnal Green in early October Enfield have won 5 drawn 2 and lost just 1 game , a run that has taken them to within a point of second place and with 2 games in hand.

Enfield have got to at least the 2nd Qualifying Round in 6 of the last 10 years but this season saw the most games they’ve played in the cup for 10 years. In the Preliminary Round they beat Crawley Green 7-0 and followed that up with 3-3 and 1-1 draws with Halstead Town in the 1st Qualifying Round before winning a penalty shoot out. In the 2nd Qualifying Round Enfield were visited by a high flying Chelmsford City side three leagues above them and got well and truly battered 0-5. They did also get to the 2nd Round of the Vase before losing, oddly, to Cambridge Regional College.

Finally, Broxbourne Borough V&E. The vanquished BBVE are doing very well this season. The Boro’ lie 4th in the Spartan South Midlands Premier five points off the promotion places but, tucked in nicely, with a game in hand. BBVE have won their last three league games racking up 9 goals but also got knocked out of the FA Vase in the 1st Round, losing to Stotfold.

It seems a long time ago that we watched these games, both were watched in warm sunshine on Saturday afternoons. Now though, as the windfall leaves start to be swept from non-league grounds, the waterlog sets it and the frost starts to bite, three of the four teams we saw in the Extra Preliminary Round are getting the decorations ready. Wembley, on the other hand, might need some charity this Christmas. Next time round, we catch up with the teams we saw in the Preliminary Round, Chertsey, Met Police, Sevenoaks and our local boys Dulwich Hamlet.