Yeovil turn the FA Cup clock back and the FA Cup is up and running.

 Yeovil turn the FA Cup clock back and the FA Cup is up and running.

So the FA Cup is up and running, ready for its perennial diet of shocks, giant killing, amusing back stories and of course the players. And then there are the managers on the touchines with their sartorially elegant array of hoodies, sweat shirts and coats with ornate fleeces. Of course this is what the FA Cup is all about. It could hardly be anything else. The beginning of December is their starting point, the first declaration of their intent even though they may be the architects of their own wishful thinking. 

This is the essence of the FA Cup, its raison d'etre, the reason why millions of rosette makers and souvenir merchants in small country market towns get so busy at this time of the year. They know they'll never get to a Wembley FA Cup Final but at least they can say with rightful confidence that they were there at the beginning of it all. So they all jump into their coaches from all four corners of Britain and pretend to think that something that may be possible in their wildest dreams is  simply a fantasy. 

Deep in the heart of cider drinking country Yeovil, once FA Cup giant killers on a monumental scale, were at it again. In 1948 Alec Stock, their jovial, jokey and friendly striker, scored the decisive winner for Yeovil at a time when everything was rationed apart from football of course. Yeovil beat the old First Division high fliers of the time Sunderland which at the time felt like a miracle because nobody had ever challenged football's hoi polloi, its landed gentry, the wealthy landowners of football's upper classes. 

At the end of another year of emotional contrasts and national rehabilitation, football now ends the year with a sombre message from its recent past but the recognition of a hope that things will get better. Football has always needed the FA Cup, rather like humans need oxygen and healthy blood cells. It is the light at the end of a rainbow, the fundamental diversion from everything that might be troubling our souls and the perfect antidote to all ills and pains. 

The FA Cup is the one football competition everybody wants to win but realistically accepts it'll never be able to do so. We all know that the aristocracy always have more jewels than they have, more stately homes, more materialistic belongings, bigger stadiums and classier seats in their ground. So over the weekend the postmen, milkmen, shop workers, supermarket lorry drivers, IT specialists, landscape gardeners, and the market research folk offered their services to the cause in hand. They are the people who keep the nation ticking over and then on FA Cup day become hilariously delusional. 

Once again Huish Park was the idyllic setting for Yeovil's day out in the FA Cup sun. The slope on the pitch may have gone with all of the Post war gloom but the spirit is prospering as never before. This time Yeovil are well and truly on an upward trajectory. They are now back in the non League or what is now the National League because that's the way of the world. Yeovil are still a work in progress but they did rub shoulders with the glamorous elite of the Football League several seasons ago. Maybe this is the way it was always meant to be for the Somerset club. 

But football still remains admirably situated on a level playing ground, an egalitarian field where the movers and shakers of the Premier League can still mix and fraternise with the humble and pragmatic. The chances are that Yeovil will never win the FA Cup at any point in the future or maybe they will. Still, they can always engage with the FA Cup which has now become the cousin they visit every year who always treat them to a slap up Sunday roast.

For much of Yeovil's first venture into FA Cup territory, there was a sense that history could have repeated itself if it tried really hard enough. But then there was Stevenage, the newcomers to the Football League pyramid, a Hertfordshire haven, a club still learning the ropes. They are now dangerously placed in League 2 and after Yeovil had taken an early lead, looked as if they were going to make a contest of this. At least this was welcome respite for Stevenage in their battle against relegation. 

Realistically Stevenage should have worn the superior robes of footballing royalty but then they looked around at the Huish and discovered that their opponents had a much nobler Cup pedigree. In their traditional green  Yeovil looked like that environmentally friendly team who always look after plants and flowers. On Saturday evening they blossomed beautifully. Their attacking movements are still stilted and loosely connected at times but there is an old time frivolity about them that warms the heart. 

At times this FA Cup second round kept sputtering into life then fizzled out like an old sparkler from Guy Fawkes night. Yeovil were solid, respectable, purposeful and coordinated but then seemed to lose their way rather like a coach that comes off at the wrong motorway roundabout. They performed like seasoned troopers, always looking for original designs rather than threadbare pieces of wool that become useless. Their passing was moderately impressive at times but this was not France in their World Cup pomp. Their football bordered on creditable rather than the outstanding. 

With Daniel Moss, Luke Wilson, Max Hunt and Morgan Williams providing defensive stability, Yeovil were at ease with themselves, never flustered or remotely worried by Stevenage but still concerned about the prospect of just being knocked out of the FA Cup. Then Dave Gorman, busy and naggingly industrious, joined up with Matt Worthington, a hard working, conscientious ploughman, scheming, plotting, foraging away in Stevenage's thorny bushes, winning the ball confidently and then finding his colleague with the neatest of touches. 

Then there was Yeovil's man of the match and moment. Sonny Lo Everton had been the driving force and spark plug for Yeovil's winning goal. Lo Everton was here, there and everywhere, holding onto the ball quietly but effectively and then moving the ball across the centre of the pitch with effortless economy. He was the machine factory worker who just gets on with the business of clocking on and then producing something crucial. Lo Everton was all exuberant skill and stylish efficiency. 

And so it was that Lo Everton became the essential component to Yeovil's passage into the FA Cup third round. After Stevenage had poorly dealt with a defensive clearance the ball was headed into the path of a hungry green shirt and Yeovil were right on course. Lo Everton, adjusting himself perfectly, kept the ball for a couple of seconds before slipping a precise, short pass into the path of the home side's striker Charlie Wakefield. Wakefield ran onto the ball laid into his path and slammed the ball into the back of the net for what would prove to be Yeovil's winning goal.

Once again the romance of the FA Cup was well and truly alive, finding its most intimate location in one of its prettiest rural spots. The Somerset locals may well have headed straight to one of its typically timber beamed pubs where the regulars can only long for Manchester City in the third round. Huge quantities of cider and scrumpy must have been consumed and the Huish terraces were jumping for joy again. Long live the FA Cup. You'll always be our friend.