Rick Rant - The Magic of the FA Cup

The magic of the FA Cup is alive and well. The prospect of lower league or even non league teams playing top tier premiership teams is always magical.

We were drawn against Marine FC of the 8th tier of the English football pyramid. It was the largest difference between two clubs in the competitions history (161 places). The home team boasted a teacher, a supermarket worker and a trainee plumber. The difference between the clubs was highlighted by the fact that Spurs team coach was too big for their parking lot. The spurs players had to walk the last few meters to get to the ground.

The magic of the cup was not lost in the UK where the game was selected for live coverage on the BBC (a rare event).

Marine and their community reveled in the exposure of the tie, quite rightly. They conducted themselves with dignity and respect to us, their more illustrious opponents. They even trolled Arsenal on their twitter account. They refused arsenals loan offer of Ozil saying their bench was already full.

So onto the game itself. It was a professional performance with us winning 5-0. We gave a host of second string players a run out and even substituted our youngest ever player Alfie Devine. Alfie even scored the last goal becoming our youngest ever goal scorer.

Marine had the inspired idea to sell virtual tickets for the game since no fans could attend. The selling of 30,000 virtual tickets, mostly too Spurs fans added much needed income to Marine who currently cannot play regular season games due to Covid. This added to the merchandise sales of programs and scarfs. The Marine chairman expressed his happiness and gratitude to us the fans of Spurs.

As shirt swapping at the end of the game (a tradition) was banned due to Covid, Spurs provided a full set of souvenir shirts to Marine after the game.

All in all, both teams treated each other with dignity and respect. The magic of the cup is alive and well.

Wear a mask and stay safe.

COYS

Rick