Can The FA Cup Survive

Its been the weekend of having a go at the FA Cup again, it started with Paul Lambert and “Its not a priority” moved onto Michael Laudrup and the “Lets get rid of replays “ and ended with Sam Allardyce and his “I had no choice but to rest 9 players”

Add in the rather poor attendances at many games, who wants to pay full price in these austere times to watch the reserves or the youth team ,a and it looks yet again that the FA Cup will in time suffer "Death By A Thousand Cuts"

So for those of us who have always and will always love the old competition what can be done to save it, the EPL have no interest in it, managers at many levels seem to think survival in the league is more important and the supporters can’t be arsed because they have limited resources to spend on watching football.

To be honest I’m not really sure, maybe if a big sponsor threw more money at it because money seems to be the be all and end all of the game now, if the FA promoted it more and maybe even returned certain things to their traditional states, the draw on a Monday lunchtime rather than before some matches have even kicked off might make it stand out from all the televised periphery of the game now.

There is no easy answer all I know is that if that if the old trophy is allowed to die without at least putting up a fight  the future when football is all about survival in order to rake in more money rather than glory as it was in my youth will be a very sad and dour place

Mangotsfield Utd 2 Fleet Town 0 Calor League South And West Div 1 (28.12.2013)

A family trip down to Devon over Christmas meant that I was never going to get back in time for AFC Wulfrunians match on the Saturday, so a post on the Non League Of Extraordinary Photographers Facebook group asking for reccommendations let to Peter Coddington inviting me to watch his Mangotsfield Utd side in the Calor League 9Step 4 in the Non League Pyramid)


Mangotsfield is easily reached being only a few minutes off the M4/M32 so despite a couple of delays due to accidents on the way up I was at the rather unromantically named Glass Consultants UK Stadium in plenty of time.Despite the name its a very pleasant well laid out stadium well maintained and with none of the signs of neglect you find at a number of grounds in the pyramid

My usual plan and a bit of an NLOEP group tradition of getting a shot of those unsung heroines of the the game,the tea ladies,was abandons as Peter advised that they are camera shy to the nth degree so all I got was a quick shot of the tea bar.

Mangotsfield are lucky to have in one section of the ground a small but extremely vociferous group of fans that helps (In a similar way to Gornal Athletics Shed Enders) give a different atmosphere to the ground and they maintained their vocal support for the entire 90 minutes.

Oh yes almost forgot the reason I was there,Peter Coddington club photographer and seriously nice bloke so here he is,in one shot taking the instruction "Strike the Pose" to a new level

And so to the match well despite the fact that we were talking top 3 v bottom 3 the match was very even throughout with Fleet putting up an excellent performance against their much higher ranked hosts and having more than 1 chance of taking the lead .
Mangotsfuield took the lead on the stroke of half time but sadly I was at the other end of the pitch looking for some artistic wide angle shots at the time so this was all i got just before the goal,I did get the hard core supporters celebrating though

The second half continued in much the same way as the first with Fleet still keeping the home team on their toes and it was well into the second half  before Mangotsfield made the game safe with an excellent individual goal that this time I got a piece of

So a very pleasant day with a friendly club and as Mangotsfield play a couple of Midlands teams hopefully I will meet up with them again