Non League Tamworth knock out League One Huddersfield Town

 Non- League Tamworth knock out League One Huddersfield Town.

The FA Cup normally reserves its giant-killing for the third round of the competition but we'll make allowances for early contenders. Normally, the Football League pyramid sits quietly in the background at the first round stage of the competition but we were now both stunned and shocked by the magical and unexpected. Last night, National League pace setters Tamworth, gently tucked away in Non League hinterland and unobtrusively minding their own business, sent League One Huddersfield Town toppling out of the FA Cup in this year's first cries of its infancy.

Ordinarily, most of us wouldn't have reacted with gobsmacked amazement at this startling turn of events but Huddersfield Town were the visitors to Tamworth's typically tight, neat, cramped and claustrophobic Lamb Ground in the middle of Staffordshire. But this one was a mighty conquest. Huddersfield, admittedly 100 years ago now, were old First Division League Champions under the legendary Herbert Chapman before Chapman came down to London and transformed Arsenal into a world-class League Championship side. 

So Huddersfield have bejewelled history and have also lifted their FA Cup and that was back in 1922. So much for those Football League superiors with all their flashy affectations, airs and graces and serial achievements. Huddersfield briefly ventured into the Premier League in recent times but that was just a fleeting flirtation and now they're back in the shark-infested waters of League One, fraternising with the less than glamorous, good- time boys who once mixed with the best and finest. 

Last night all of the FA Cup stereotypes were in full evidence. There were the matchbox terraces, shaking with breathless anticipation, little children dangling their legs over advertising hoardings, the seething, heaving masses and the hardcore, dedicated Tamworth supporters who have braved wind, rain and snow through innumerable seasons over the years. There were the signs for local steam cleaners, metal car showroom signs and clearly prominent sponsors from Staffordshire's most well- respected factories and companies.

This was Tamworth's greatest night in the TV limelight. Nobody would have ever heard about anything that in any way related to the club apart from perhaps that celebrated story of escaping pigs many years ago. Now though the fantasy story came joyfully to fruition. Yesterday evening, the tightly knit communities and amiable clubhouses of the National League were full to the gunnels with chairman, managers and fans munching away gleefully at well made, nutritious sandwiches, plenty of harmless and inoffensive booze, crisps and savouries and that pervasive air of rock and roll celebration. 

The obscenely wealthy environment of the Premier League seemed a world away and Tamworth amply demonstrated their non League prowess with their more than competent capabilities. It would have been easy to dismiss Tamworth as lightweights, little known minnows, purring pussycats who were just there for a severe battering at the hands of their once illustrious opponents. Instead, the National League got their come- uppance over League One, a classic example of the so called peasants and proletariats coming unstuck against the posh, swanky, bourgeois elite who play their football on an altogether different planet. 

Recently, my son and I had the enormous pleasure and honour of watching Prescot Cables, a cosy outpost in the shadow of Merseyside, a land of solar- panelled rooftops, crisp, leaveless, autumnal trees without any summer foliage and men in yellow shirts who could have been mistaken for Wolves. It was football of earthy authenticity and warm sentimentality, where the local lads play for simple, unalloyed joy and little in the way of national recognition. Prescot Cables were beaten 2-0 by Northumberland's Morpeth Town. There was no end of the world sense of apocalyptic disaster for the Cables because nobody had been hurt, there were no film stars or celebrities, no prima donna, pampered superstars. It was grassroots football at its most intoxicating. You were drunk with happiness. It was the FA Cup working its magic. 

At Lamb Ground last night, there were tiny cafes and busy refreshment kiosks doing a roaring trade selling warming cups of teas and coffees. There were shining palaces of commerce glowing in the evening light and the floodlights towering over the ground were truly uplifting. These were not the massive chandeliers of the Premier League, more the lovely studio apartment lights of the National League with a slender pole at each end of the ground.

But Lamb Ground is a glorious or, perhaps not so glorious throwback. Lamb Ground has a plastic,artificial pitch known in the modern vernacular as 4G. You were painfully transported back to the 1980s when artificial football pitches were all the rage. Queens Park Rangers became the trailblazers for plastic pitches at a time when the late and much loved Terry Venables was still writing detective novels and crooning songs with the Joe Loss Orchestra. Venables also happened to be instrumental in one of the most memorable moments for the England national side when he almost guided the country to Euro 96 winning glory but then saw Germany in the headlights and bit his lip. It was semi final heartache at its most excruciating.

Then there was Luton Town who also got into the act of this new fangled business of plastic pitches. To this day there simply seemed a nonsensical silliness about these synthetic grounds where the bounce of a ball reduced the game to the status of mockery and satire. Then there were the burn marks on the body where the friction caused by the scraping of players well honed legs and arms, just beggared belief. 

And yet the shiny green 4G pitch was somehow acceptable because this was the FA Cup and anything goes. There were no WAG girlfriends in the crowd, no VAR, no controversial decisions although the winning goal itself might have been chalked off. This was plain, unpretentious Tamworth, old school, old fashioned, illuminated by the splendidly heroic figure of one Tom Tonks. Tom Tonks may be an unknown journeyman who just loves the electrifying atmosphere of the FA Cup but Tonks revelled last night in one of the most magnificent long throw routines that saw off Huddersfield when none saw it coming.

The FA Cup was still weaving webs of withcraft and the supernatural even a night after Halloween. There were no orange pumpkins or broomsticks at the Lamb Ground but even the most wide eyed optimists were predicting a night to remember. How dare Tamworth assume ideas above their station. They should have been preparing for another National League fixture rather than planning for the world's most famous competition. But football of course can be the most richly fertile of level playing grounds. We all knew that. Football has an innate capacity for turning the world upside down.

As for the football itself in this often free- flowing and rewarding FA Cup first round match between Tamworth and Huddersfield there was something very raw and natural about the game. It reminded you of one of those old Pathe newsreels where the rattles and rosettes can be both heard and seen the length of the local shopping centre. This was never football designed for the purists and connoisseurs of the one touch, instinctive variety seen in matches involving Brazil, Germany, France and Spain. But it was good to watch and essentially pleasant on the eye.

Tamworth had Jasbir Singh in goal who was the very epitome of bravery, flinty courage and absolutely bravura heroism, flinging himself at everything, being hit in every part of his battered body and sacrificing life and limb. Hadyn Hollis and the wonderfully named Jordan Cullaine Liburd were towers of security and reliable as front doors at full back and centre back, locking up the home defence rather like yeomen at the Tower of London. Luke Fairlamb was a busybody, ubiquitous, here and there midfielder, various fingers in different pies, scurrying and scampering to all points of the compass, helping out when necessary and urgent. Ben Milnes, Tom McGlinchey were always intelligent and perceptive while Rico Browne just stood tall and assured for Tamworth. David Creaney, up front, buzzed, darted and probed for the ball rather like a kid hunting for a lost ball that had landed in a neighbour's garden.

For Huddersfield of course this was a deeply uncomfortable, distressing and humiliating defeat which wasn't supposed to happen but did. Their small knot of away travelling fans could hardly look through bemused eyes. Tom Lees, Nigel Lonwijk, Matty Pearson, David Kasunu, the hapless Serbian Bojan Radulovic were never on the same wavelength and frequently moved the ball about between themselves like a wartime grenade, never quite knowing where they were going with the ball. When they did get anywhere the Tamworth goal, it looked as if too many cooks had spoilt the broth. 

It was all very well intentioned and honourable but Huddersfield were going nowhere. The up and under, long ball nature of football at this level always ruined the spectacle at times. But Tamworth did try to play it the right way and for that they have to be commended for their enterprise and willingness to keep the ball on the deck. At times it was all very higgledy piggledy, dreary and desultory occasionally descending into the typically awful. But this was the FA Cup and, besides, who cared?

The winning goal itself was both accidental and ever so reckless and careless. Tom Tonks, Tamworth's man of the night, wound himself up for one of those long throw-cum missiles for which he is now renowned across the whole of Britain. Rubbing the ball on his chest and staring menacingly into the eyes of petrified Huddersfield defenders eyes, Tonks held the ball high into the air and launched a miraculous throw into the away side's trembling penalty area. 

Chris Maxwell, the Terriers goalkeeper, leapt up for the ball confidently but then broke every goalkeeper's time- honoured rule. Maxwell fumbled and bumbled, dropping the ball clumsily and getting punished for his negligence. The ball fell into no man's land and,after an unseemly scramble, prodded the ball into his own net with his back foot. It was not the way Maxwell had imagined the night would turn out for him but his Huddersfield team had now unravelled. 

You remembered the Huddersfield of yesteryear, the immortal and exceptional King Denis Law who began his career at the old Leeds Road ground but then discovered Manchester United and never looked back. Then there was the lovable socialite and party animal who went by the name of Frank Worthington who started his career at Huddersfield. Worthington once scored one of the most spectacular goals ever seen while at Bolton. Trapping the ball deftly with his back to goal, Worthington juggled the ball with both feet, back- flicked the ball over his shoulder impudently and drove the ball into an Ipswich Town net, a goal to treasure in an unforgettable 3-3 draw.

But last night Huddersfield were back in less enlightened company. It felt as if they were almost completely overawed by these humble surroundings. Your mind drifted charmingly back to Herbert Chapman, the Huddersfield manager who revolutionised the club overnight. The formal waistcoat, bowler hat and cigarette characterised the man but even Chapman would have been at a loss at the modern incarnation of Huddersfield Town. It was not a pretty sight.