The Magic of the Cup (in Hitchin)

If you're an American, don't bother reading this. It won't make any sense. Its nothing personal, but you really won't understand, and I wouldn't want to waste your time.

I love lower-league football. While I support West Ham I like to leaven my Premiership bread with the odd trip to bizarre and far-flung corners of our great footballing land. Such as Barnet in the League Cup, Bath City, Huddersfield, Dagenham and Redbridge (an utter dump), York City, Scarborough United (sponsored by McCain's Oven Chips), Colchester United (a hateful place) and, seminally, Exeter City vs Leyton Orient. One of the best (I use that word advisedly) matches I've enjoyed came on Saturday, when I found myself in the middle of rural Bedfordshire watching Hitchin Town vs Saffron Walden Town in the 1st (preliminary) round of the FA Cup. Why? No idea. Me and my friend Skinny thought it would be fun, and no matter how jaded and cynical one becomes you can never quite resist the magic of the Cup.

Hitchin, apparently, are a team on the slide. They used to be in the Conference but they've since drifted some way down the league ladder. The cheeky bastards still charged us £8 to get in, plus £2 for a programme. Mind you, their gates are so low they probably recognised we weren't from round those parts and quadrupled their prices. 350 hardy souls with nothing better to do on a saturday, and yes there really were a couple of blokes with dogs on bits of string. Saffron Walden are lowlier still, plumbing the depths of the Essex Senior League. It has to be said that their chances of glory in the final in May are slim.

At the start of the game the teams tossed a coin and decided to change ends. We were flabbergasted when the entire home support followed suit and changed ends too! So we decided to stay put and cheer Saffron Walden on to glory. Bollocks to Hitchin. They neither needed nor deserved our enthusiastic backing. The away support amounted to a magnificent 15 people (inclusive of us), which must be some sort of record.

You can imagine what the football itself was like. The ball barely touched the ground for the first 20 minutes. Rather than pass the ball, defenders on both teams tried to simply hoof the ball as high and as hard as possible, with midfield more or less bypassed from the start. Balls were frequently thumped clean out of the ground, and a couple even got lost in the plane trees that shield one side of the stadium from the icy wind. It was dour, dire, desperate stuff. Come half time even the obligatory tea and burger failed to lift our spirits, but we decided to cheer ourselves up by swimming upstream against the gentle trickle of home fans and shuttling round to the 'kop', a vast terrace which, in brighter times, probably held around 1,000 of the Hitchin faithful. The 15 of us looked fairly pathetic, I'd imagine.

Luckily for our sanity the game picked up in the second half - there was actually some pretty neat football played by both sides, while the Saffron Walden keeper was playing out of his skin, keeping the adrenaline-crazed hordes of Hitchin attackers at bay. But endless pressure had to tell and Hitchin finally scored 10 minutes from time, sadly after a keeper error. Then things got interesting. First, Hitchin brought on a sub, a ludicrous-looking streak of piss with a long, curly Keegan-perm who, I expect, is regularly made mincemeat of by more numerous opposition crowds. Anyway, he immediately scythed into a hapless Walden midfielder to get himself booked before he'd actually touched the ball. There followed a most excellent punch-up. After the handbags had died down Hitchin decided that rather than shut up shop and see out a narrow win, it would be more fun for everyone if they took the mick. They took off the goalscorer and brought on someone who I can only assume was the next-door neighbour of the manager, or something. This was a very large, very fat bloke, mid-thirties by the look of him, and very definitely not a footballer. The telltale signs were there - gathering the ball with no opposition player within 20 yards he quickly and nervously shuffled it sideways to someone else, was skinned for pace a couple of times, and committed a number of laughably clumsy fouls. The gods rarely smile on such a lack of respect, and Hitchin duly got their come-uppance; the resurgent Saffron could smell blood, and within a minute or two they equalised, following a classic goalmouth scramble. In the remaining minutes they almost snatched it.

With the final whistle the Saffron players and support celebrated like they'd won the competition, and rightly so - no-hopers maybe, but still living the dream. We had a little cheer for them before we sloped off, dodging furrowed-browed Hitcheners as we strode. The replay's tonight.

By total and utter contrast, I went to see West Ham on Sunday, one among 35,000. We were hopeless, our expensive Argies were anonymous, and we deservedly lost 2-0. Sod the Premiership - give me the so-called dross in football's basement any day. I already have my eye on Redditch United vs Wisbech Town in the next round.


This week's recommendations:
Persian Fire by Tom Holland. A masterpiece of narrative history
Padraig Harrington to be top points scorer in the Ryder Cup at 11-1 (PaddyPower). Though I have a feeling the US will win. ..