FA Cup third round weekend.

 FA Cup third round weekend.

You do know what day it is tomorrow or, in a much broader context, the whole weekend if truth be told. Nowadays football has no specific time frame or any reference point. It could happen on the traditional, first week of the New Year and also on a Saturday afternoon. But that would just be an easy assumption since football, in recent times, now holds no recognisable kick off moment on our sporting itinerary. At some point all football supporters will have to rush through their breakfast of tea, toast or cereal and just be content with whatever their team are capable of producing on this day of days - the earlier the better.

Ladies and Gentlemen. It's the third round of the FA Cup and this is signpost territory for every professional team across Britain. From here football finds itself in completely alien territory, excited and perhaps even excitable since football has always aroused fierce passions. It is a day when the giant killers from the non League pyramid hunt down in packs and breathe down the necks of their supposedly loftier and superior brethren. Sometimes it has that wonderful capacity for shocking us, silencing us, leaving us dumbfounded and then leaving us mesmerised by its arbitrariness, the magical sense of the unexpected and then gasping with delight.

Because let's face it when was the last time the FA Cup had followed its original route and just stuck to custom and convention? Eventually the minnows and non Leaguers do accept their station in life and slip almost reluctantly out of the competition. But the FA Cup does know how to surprise us because the proletariat should always know their place. The little guys should just stick to their day job and never challenge the status quo since the Premier League monarchy always end up with a diamond encrusted crown on their heads.

But tomorrow the carpenters, builders, labourers, hod carriers, supermarket shelf stackers, post men and women, milk men and milk women, plumbers, mechanics and park keepers, combine their collective talents and just believe in the improbable and, often, impossible. They clock off from their factory gates, take off their boiler suits and knuckle down to the task in hand. They will know their place in the hierarchy because the FA Cup does occasionally get too big for its boots and sneers disdainfully at the part-timers, the tradesmen and women, the ones who always get up at the crack of dawn and just graft away industriously.

We all know by now about those well documented FA Cup giant killers, the minnows who boycotted the odds and refused to listen to all the alleged pomposity of the Premier League. But we love the Premier League and we stump up second mortgages for season tickets at Liverpool, Manchester City and United, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and all of those aristocratic socialites who always think they know better than the rest.

So we'll all get up tomorrow morning and just scan the sports pages of our newspapers in case we've missed the latest developments in the transfer window. Then we'll notice that a vast majority of its coverage is devoted to those painters and decorators, the landscape gardeners and electricians who are the very lifeblood of football's heart, lungs, kidneys and blood cells. They're the ones who just want to be in the bag for the fourth round of the FA Cup and never hog the limelight because nobody notices them anyway.

But we know all about the magical and romantic nature of the FA Cup because those are the perennial themes every time the FA Cup comes calling and rolls into town, city and market stall around England. Of course there are no candle lit dinners to be awarded to any of the players whose wives, girlfriends or female companions fancy an early Valentines Day present. There is always a comfortable sense of democracy among football and the FA Cup. The fans, devoted supporters and lifelong loyalists are an essential part of this whole weekend's landscape because without them the game would be played in some haunting vacuum. 

So strap up for the great emotional roller coaster ride  that is invariably generated by the FA Cup. Its enduring air of mystique and mythology are now safely embedded in its rich history. Nobody feels left out when the FA Cup turns up on the doorstep of some lovely recreation ground next to a an allotment site or some non League outpost that just sits happily on the peripheries of the game. And yet they'll always feel warmly included  and embraced on third round day because the FA Cup is football's level playing field, their day, their place and their time.

Many of us will recall  the little clubs and their wondrous achievements when everybody had written them off as no hopers. There was Sutton, now a League Two side but back in 1987 they toppled Coventry City from their FA Cup perch. Coventry, of course, were a top flight team at the time but Sutton laid lethal gloves on their high society betters and knocked out the Sky Blues with the most clinical of punches. In 1948, Yeovil, guided by the cheerful and always upbeat Alec Stock, stunned the football world by beating old First Division Sunderland, a major force at the time. In 1973 Sunderland's Bob Stokoe galloped onto the old Wembley pitch overjoyed at his old Second Division team overcoming another formidable foe in Leeds United who were flying high in the top flight with Don Revie.

Wherever you go this weekend for your feast of FA Cup football be sure to take with you a plentiful supply of idealism, optimism and just a thought for those who may think Wembley is just a North London suburb with an arch and nothing more. But you never know. The FA Cup plays strange and mysterious tricks with your imagination and by the end of this weekend this could be a day to remember for eternity. It may be your team's memorable season. We're about to find out.