When I was growing up, the FA Cup Final was a big event on our social calendar in Port Elizabeth, perhaps owing to South Africa’s isolation from international sport, but also because all my Dad’s friends seemed to have an English soccer team they keenly supported.
Every year we would go to a different house for the game and in 1992, with Liverpool playing Sunderland in the final, and owing to my Gran coming from near Liverpool, I decided to take an interest in the game for the first time. I even cringingly made a (very amateur) A4 ‘flag’ of the Liverpool badge and took it with to the braai. I was a sports mad kid and the soccer bug bit and bit hard, and the passion for LFC has never burned brighter, 30 years later.
Liverpool won the game 2-0 against second tier Sunderland. I am so grateful that my gran didn’t originate in the north-east of England as I would have had a life of misery supporting the Black Cats!
The beginning of my support for the Reds coincided with the decline of the team, after having dominated English and European football for the 1970s and 1980s. It also overlapped with Man United’s almost monopoly on the Premier League and the ruination of many weekends, including the 1997 FA Cup Final, the first (and far from the last) time I cried when Liverpool lost a football match. Along with paralysing self-doubt, my youth was overshadowed by United winning what seemed like everything, often helped by scoring very late (often dubiously so) on the way to league titles and cup triumphs. Their dramatic metamorphosis into underachievers over the past 5 or 6 years has cheered me no end!
The Fourth round of this season’s FA Cup had a few potential banana skins for Premier League teams and this is what makes the competition as exciting as it is. There isn’t another country in the world where teams from as low down in the pyramid can defeat superior teams, often helped by vastly different pitches to the bowling greens of the Premier League stadia and hostile and intimate venues.
The first game of the weekend was a case in point. A struggling Man United (I don’t get tired of this phrase) up against Middlesbrough, doing well in the Championship on a Friday night at Old Trafford.
Manchester United 1 (7) – 1 (8) Middlesbrough – after penalties
Waking up early on 5 February 2022 in my apartment in Mongolia, I rolled over and casually checked my football notifications, with no hope that Middlesbrough could be doing anything against Man United at Old Trafford. I sat bolt upright when I saw that it was 1-1 with a minute to go of normal time.
I quickly connected my VPN and began streaming the game just in time to see the start of extra time. What followed was much hilarity, especially hearing that Ronaldo had missed a penalty and that Boro’s goal was a blatant handball in the build-up. Boro survived extra time and this meant the lottery of penalties would decide the winner.
Surely United’s class on the field would now tell. The first 5 penalty takers for both teams all scored, meaning it would go to sudden death. My hopes increased that Boro could do it and their next three efforts were all unsaveable. Anthony Elanga stepped up for United at 8-7, having to score. His penalty was so poor it would have been 3 points on the rugby field! Middlesbrough went through to the next round and my Saturday morning walk to the office in -25 degrees suddenly seemed appealing and I basically skipped in to work!
There were a number of potential giant-killing acts in store for the rest of the round, with teams surely buoyed by Middlesbrough’s exploits at the beginning of the weekend.
Kidderminster Harriers 1 – 2 West Ham United
I remember Kidderminster had a famous FA Cup run in the mid-1990s, and with a name like that you tend to remember them. Similar to 1994, their run was to come to an end against West Ham.
It was a double dose of Heartbreak Hotel for Kidderminster. Having taken the lead in the first half, they conceded in injury time of both normal time and extra time! Their manager couldn’t believe it, but West Ham’s quality told in the end with Declan Rice and Jarrod Bowen, their best players being the goal scorers.
It was played on a proper old school surface, which looked more like a rugby pitch than a football pitch and a really tight ground, packed to the rafters. Kidderminster are in the sixth tier of the English football pyramid and for them to have beaten a team from the Premier League would have been unthinkable! So close, yet so far.
It would have been great to see David Moyes, West Ham’s manager, trying to explain this defeat away, but it wasn’t to be. His week would get more awkward with the news and video emerging of his centre back Kurt Zouma kicking his cat!!!
Chelsea 2 – 1 Plymouth Argyle (after extra time)
The European Champions (puke!) had what appeared to be a straightforward route to the next round with a home game against Plymouth, a team from two divisions below them. Chelsea were about to go to the Club World Cup and surely Plymouth wouldn’t pose any danger to them.
Again, the lower ranked team took the lead, with Plymouth, of League One, scoring early. Chelsea levelled before half time and then scored what turned out to be the winner in extra time, but there was still more drama and heartbreak for a lower division team.
Plymouth won a penalty with two minutes to go, but Chelsea’s ‘keeper, a source of ridicule in the past, saved from the spot, to spare Chelsea’s blushes and see them through to the next round.
Nottingham Forest 4 – 1 Leicester City
Nottingham Forest have had a couple shock wins over Arsenal in the last few seasons in the FA Cup so Leicester, a team struggling in the Premier League, must have been dreading their visit to the City Ground against the Championship team.
Any fears they had were brought to life as they were thrashed by Forest, a team I hope gets promotion this year. That will bring back lots of memories of the 1990s when Forest were regulars in the Premier League, a famous club who have even won the European Cup twice!
I have no love for Leicester, so seeing them get dumped out was a great story! They were 3-0 down in the first half and saved face by pulling one back, but Forest did the decent thing and finished the scoring to make it 4-1 and send the Foxes home with their tails firmly between their legs!
AFC Bournemouth 0 – 1 Boreham Wood
The biggest shock was saved for the last game of the round, with the lowest ranked team still in the competition, Boreham Wood, beating Championship side Bournemouth, away from home!
The Wood’s win meant that they reached the fifth round for the first time in their history, a truly great FA Cup story, something that many thought had disappeared with the riches the Premier League clubs have at their disposal.
Boreham Wood have drawn Everton in the Fifth round, Liverpool’s local rivals and a team I despise as much as Man United. This has the makings of a great weekend for the red half of Merseyside, with the added bonus that anything but an easy win for the Toffees would heap ridicule on Frank Lampard and ‘The People’s Club’ – spare me!
The FA Cup will always be special for me, owing to the fact that it led me to start supporting my beloved Liverpool. This relationship with Liverpool has been an abusive one for a long time but the last few years have brought amazing success, memories and special goals. I wouldn’t change a thing, well almost nothing. #hodgson #hicksandgillett #konchesky
It is a well-worn and in recent years, often ridiculed phrase, but the Fourth round of the FA Cup has shown again that there is still “Magic in the Cup”. For me, supporting Liverpool means trying to win things, not just come in the top 4 of the Premier League to avail ourselves of the riches that brings. The FA Cup is an opportunity for glory and to add to the Honours Wall. It is sad that the competition is only taken seriously by most clubs when they get into the latter rounds as no other competition in world sport can put teams from different divisions on an equal footing. Watching the Reds in an FA Cup Final at Wembley is very high on my bucket list.
Liverpool have got a third home draw in a row for the Fifth round against Norwich City, perennial basement dwellers when they make it to the Premier League. Maybe our luck in the draws in cup competitions is turning, and there is already hope building for lifting the oldest football knockout competition in the world at Wembley in the middle of May, as we finally have a deep enough squad to compete on multiple fronts. Up the REDS!