FA Cup first round day.

 FA Cup first round day.

For those who may be unfamiliar with  FA Cup history and its status you may like to read on. The FA Cup is one of football's most beloved, dearly cherished and fondly recalled Cup competitions. It is Cup football on a level playing ground, very little in the way of discrimination or prejudice and it does love its giant killers. 

These are the part timers and amateurs who happily ply their trade as bricklayers, fitters, plasterers, lorry drivers, postmen and milkmen, engineers, supermarket shelf stackers and people who generally go about their business, unsung, probably grossly underpaid and keeping their noses clean. They are the humble ones, the modest ones, the self deprecating ones who just want to earn a living and look after their families. 

Today marks the first round of the FA Cup and a vast array of talent from all of those lower division likely lads and non League sides will step onto the bandwagon, visualise Wembley Stadium in May and then chuckle innocently at the sheer preposterousness of their ambitions. You see the trouble with the FA Cup is that somebody has to lose at some point but when your ground is nestled charmingly between a couple of park roundabouts or an industrial estate you have to believe that anything may be possible. 

Then there are teams whose ground lies right next to an idyllic river in the countryside or a field of sheep in the Lake District. But this is not a day for worrying about the state of the farming industry or whether your team are just happy to be in the FA Cup's first round. Now they know and you know that the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal may not be trembling in their boots at the prospect of meeting these lovely minnows. But it's still one day and one opportunity, their chance to shine, grab the headlines and monopolise the Sunday back pages. 

When the likes of Buxton FC and Sudbury make their way onto their respective pitches their thoughts may turn to Yeovil who, as a non League team in 1948, toppled mighty First Division Sunderland and even Alec Stock, Yeovil's very grounded boss, had to rub his eyes with incredulity. Then there was Sutton, newcomers to the League Two and the League, who once played out of their skins to beat Coventry City, then a thriving top flight team. It was the FA Cup third round then but that's for January and later. 

But today is the genesis of their season, all of those little clubs who sit discreetly tucked into the folds of  the non League. Here they are just blissfully content to earn a couple more bob than they may be used to. For those whose main day job consists of repairing cars or driving trains the FA Cup represents a day off, indulging fantasies, forgetting about the outside world and just concentrating on the ultimate objective of walking out at Wembley and shaking the hands of royalty on FA Cup Final day. 

Several seasons ago you remember little Canvey Island, quite the oddest and most improbable participants at any stage of any FA Cup rounds. How they must have pinched themselves when the BBC cameras came calling. For just 90 minutes, this tiny Essex suburb made a household name of themselves. They were the most welcoming and hospitable of non League teams since although Canvey lost there was a sense here that this was the very essence of the Cup. 

Suddenly, Match of the Day cameras panned across the whole of Canvey Island and its immediate surrounds. For a while you could actually see the traffic outside on the roads, cars, buses, vans and lorries trundling towards their destination. Then you noticed the serried rows of neat, terraced houses back to back, whole neighbourhoods watching the game out of their windows. And right at the end of one road a fire engine stood patiently, oblivious to the FA Cup perhaps but nonetheless present. 

Then there were the likes of Morecambe and Accrington Stanley, who used to be non League battlers but are now League Two stalwarts. Of course Burnley, not a million miles away from both Morecambe and Accrington Stanley, could provide a backdrop of Lowry's smoking factories and humming mills but they were the ones who may have felt left out on FA Cup third round day. They used to be in the first round of the FA Cup but nobody really gave them any credit whatsoever.

But this weekend it's all about baby steps, those eternal dreamers and idealists, full of wishful thinking but determined to give it a crack. They'll be sitting in their quaint grandstands which are roughly the size of a matchbox. They'll be patting themselves vigorously because it's November and we're bound to put on the central heating when Match of the Day cameras are on them tonight. They'll be eagerly twisting off the lids of a hundred Thermos flasks and then lifting their ageless scarves. Step forward St Albans and Forest Green Rovers. This is the FA Cup in a nutshell, the most perfect contest. 

By the end of the weekend those magnificent chairmen, women and directors on the board will be pouring out their gratitude to those loyal supporters who have stuck with them through thick and thin. They'll thank the fans for clicking enthusiastically through rusting turnstiles and just being there. Their involvement in the FA Cup may just be a yellowing page in the history books but they've played in the FA Cup and that's all that counts. 

On Monday morning those same fans might be huddling by their I Phones, Tablets or the radio, hoping that among others, Exeter, Grimsby, Portsmouth, Rochdale and Plymouth Argyle will be sweeping their terraces, cleaning their seats and readying themselves for the non League challengers, those plucky troopers from outside the Football League pyramid but fired up, pumped up and galvanised at the thrilling immensity of their task. 

The FA Cup first round is more or less that point in the season when the Premier League, Championship, League Ones and Two become very self conscious. They may be more interested in the weekly chores of scrapping for League points but subconsciously they may give a fleeting thought to Thurrock, Buxton FC or even Accrington Stanley. Today is that notable stage in the season when the bourgeoisie, the monied classes and the wealthy elite stop for a while perhaps and cast their minds towards January and the beginning of the FA Cup third round. But first things first.