The cup is still a knockout!

SHAUN WRIGHT PHILLIPS couldn’t have looked more dumbstruck if Jose Mourinho had just told him he was going to start a match for Chelsea.

It was February of last year and a group of us hacks had been invited to Munich to have a little natter with some of the stars of the European game in the build-up to the World Cup finals in Germany.

Since it seemed pretty obvious even then that poor young Shaun would have about as much chance of playing in the tournament as I would, I charitably went off-message to inquire about Chelsea’s forthcoming FA Cup fifth round tie against Colchester United.

“Has there been much talk at Stamford Bridge about Colchester’s cup victory over Leeds in 1971?”, I asked.

It was then that SWP gave me the kind of look you might see on the face of a dog if you showed it a magic trick. “Er, no,” he eventually managed to blurt out, before dissolving into giggles. I suppose I couldn’t really blame him. As a delighted colleague pointed out, inviting Phillips to comment on a match from 35 years ago would have been akin, back in ‘71, to asking ‘Sniffer’ Clarke for his views on a game which had taken place three years before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Little wonder that the same colleague now likes to refer to me as ‘The Historian’.

But then history has a way of coming alive in the FA Cup. You don’t have to be as long in the tooth as your present correspondent to know that, in one of the greatest ever feats of giant-killing in the competition, little Colchester beat Don Revie’s mighty Leeds 3-2 in the Fifth round in 1971, leaving the likes of Johnny Giles and Jack Charlton with considerable quantities of egg on face.

And the following year it was the turn of non-league Hereford United to humble Newcastle United in a third-round replay, one Ronnie Radford eclipsing Malcolm ‘Supermac’ Macdonald on the day and earning ‘Match Of The Day’ immortality with a 30 yard screamer which brought virtually the whole ground onto the mucky pitch in uproarious, disbelieving celebration.

And that was just for the equaliser!

When Ricky George got the winner, shock sporting history was made and a young BBC commentator by the name of John Motson had his own FA Cup debut to remember. (For the record, Hereford managed a 0-0 draw on their own patch against West Ham in the next round before going down 3-1 in the replay at Upton Park, all the Hammer’s goals coming from that well-known hat-trick hero, Geoff Hurst).

Doubtless the fact that I had only recently become a footie obsessive means that those unforgettable cup games from the 70’s made an especially deep impression on my fragile, eggshell mind, but even seen-it-all-before veterans would have been electrified by the final of 1972 when Second Division Sunderland defied all the odds to beat Leeds 1-0 at Wembley.

Want to know how much moments like that mean to a club? Thirty four years on, when Roy Keane goes to work in the Stadium of Light, he passes a statue of Bob Stokoe which immortalises the then Sunderland manager in the middle of his famous, bounding frolic across the Wembley turf at the final whistle.

It wasn’t just the prospect of the little ‘uns’ humbling the big ‘uns’ which made the FA Cup so glamorous and exciting. In the dark ages BS (before Sky), Cup Final day was an authentic television event, a rare chance for those of us who viewed the English game from afar to spend not only 90 live minutes in the company of the stars but also to travel with them on the coach, peek into the dressing room, meet the celebrity fans (well, Jimmy Tarbuck at any rate) and encounter what seemed to us in our innocence like a 101 other wonders of the age.

There have been plenty of thrills and spills and shocks down the years since then, of course, but with the increasing supremacy of the Premiership and the suffocating lure of Champions League lucre, the prestige of the competition has taken a fair old battering in recent years, culminating in Manchester United’s decision — admittedly under pressure from the FA — to give the Cup a complete miss in 1999 in order to take part in the inaugural FIFA Club World Championship in Brazil.

But there are signs now that the grand old trophy is regaining its shine. Ironically, we can partly thank Chelsea’s monopolisation of the league in the last couple of seasons for making the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool see that the cup can still provide a meaningful route to late-season glory.

This year’s two-horse race in the Premiership may be making for a reasonably exciting second half of the season but a glance at the current top four confirms that predictability still rules in the top-flight. Which is why I’m sure I’m not alone in welcoming this weekend’s break from the long haul in favour of some of those 3rd Round fireworks we all know and love.

Liverpool v Arsenal may be the big one and romantics will be rooting for Paul Ince’s Macclesfield at the Bridge but, me, I’ll also be keeping a little eye out on Colchester (of the Championship) v Barnet (of League Two) to see if, 36 years on, the giantkilling tables are turned.

The FA Cup? As we used to say, back in the 70’s, it’s a knockout.