Saints breeze past Saddlers on an FA Cup Third Round Saturday in the sun

What happens when you go from watching matches with 200 people in attendance to one with more than 20,000 present?

It's going to eat away at me for the rest of the season, in all likelihood. Since the end of July, I've been following the FA Cup. A game in each round since the Extra Preliminary Round at the end of July, a couple of them poor, but the majority entertaining and, more importantly than anything, else matches that mattered. But my spell was broken in the Second Round. There weren't many matches in this neck of the woods to start with, and when the match between Wimbledon and Ramsgate was chosen to be moved to the Monday night for the good of television, I had to concede defeat.

But that doesn't stop you, does it? The lure of the FA Cup is just too great. The Third Round draw doesn't leave too many options unless I fancy schlepping up to London, but it does leave one; Southampton vs Walsall at St Mary's. Tickets are cheap—£14 including a mildly absurd £1.50 ‘processing fee’—and likely fairly plentiful, while it's a new ground for me too. Before I have the chance to talk myself out of it, I book not only the match ticket but the train ticket, too.

On a bright, sunny Saturday morning on the train to Southampton, I try to think of what I know about Southampton. I'm well into my 18th year on the south coast. I've done Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, Bognor Regis, and all significant steps east from there as far as Hastings, but Southampton has somehow escaped my attention thus far. I skirted past here on the way to Eastleigh in the First Round of this competition, but it would probably be unfair to judge a city from a stop-off at the Costa opposite the main entrance to Southampton Central railway station as I waited for my connecting train.

But I've given myself enough time, on this occasion, to wander through the town centre and down to the quayside in the - vain, as it turned out - hopes of seeing a ginormous cruise liner (because I fundamentally have the sensibilities of a ten year old boy), and even have time to stop off for a pint at a pub about, by my calculations, about a fifteen minute walk from the stadium. The streets fill with a hum of expectant noise as I get closer, and the air thickens with the smell of frying onions, the undoubted smell of football.

St Mary's is of the new generation of bowl-shaped grounds, and while some may decry that they all look the same nowadays, I'm an infrequent enough visitor to places of this size to still be impressed by it all. And if you actually stop and think about it, it's really quite incredible that all this happens every weekend, from August to May. There are more than 22,000 people here this afternoon, packed into an area the size of a large department store. And this isn't just happening here, this once. This happens in towns and cities across the continent every weekend for nine months. When you look at the numbers on a website or in a newspaper, they're abstract. When you see the operation up close and personal, it's a sobering reminder of what an effort it takes to get them on in the first place.

It's all steel and plate glass on the outside glass, with Ted Bates looking down on the crowds. He's definitely the centrepiece of the exterior, though there is a queue to get into the club shop, even at 2.30. And the queue to get through the turnstile is practically non-existent, such are the marvels of the modern world. A robot scans my barcode to let me in. Of course, once inside you're greeted by the interior of a multi-storey car park—many grounds feature this aesthetic, to some extent or other— I so opt for finding my seat instead. I went for a seat in the Gods and it's a lot of steps to get up there, but it's a good vantage point and also close enough to the travelling Walsall supporters for them to be clearly audible throughout the afternoon.

But broadly speaking, everybody's friendly and St Mary's is a pretty happy place, prior to kick off. Small wonder. Southampton came close to falling off the bottom of the Premier League at the end of last season, and when relegation comes about in such an abrupt manner—there was a point last season when it felt as though they simply decided that they just weren't cut out for this division and that was that—it's tempting to start wondering whether it's the beginning of something rather than the end. But instead, they've been good this season, in third place in the Championship with just four league defeats from 26 games, and should second-placed Ipswich get an attack of the collywobbles they could be well-placed to capitalise.

Walsall, meanwhile, had been struggling in League Two but are now on the up, with five wins from their last six, including three straight wins over the Christmas period. And those wins—6-1 at Grimsby, 3-1 against Wrexham, and 2-0 against Crewe—have been enough to lift them up from 19th place in the table to 11th. Broadly speaking, manager Mat Sadler—the most appropriately named manager in the EFL—seems to have steadied a mildly listing ship, and they’ve brought a good couple of thousand noisy supporters down here with them this afternoon, though I barely saw any around the city centre on my brief diversion through there or on the way to the ground other than a handful of herberts hanging around the station who looked like they’d started on the booze at about five o’clock this morning.

And while they haven’t caused an upset in this competition, they have least beaten a couple of familiar names to get this far. In the First Round they beat Sheppey United, who are in 6th place in the Isthmian League Division One South-East between Lancing and Chichester City, and in the Second they beat Alfreton Town, who’d beaten my hometown team Worthing in the round before. Had Worthing won that match, there’s every possibility that I might have found myself watching Walsall a round earlier than this.

But against Championship opposition, they’re quickly and easily undone. It only takes six minutes for Southampton to find a means to get the ball through to Ryan Fraser, who whacks the ball past the goalkeeper to give the home side the lead. Curiously, manager Russell Martin had said before the match that he was intending to start a strong team for this match, only to then make nine changes, but even this relatively callow-looking eleven was too much for Walsall, and by the time Sekou Mara scoops the ball over the crossbar from six yards out midway through the first half to slightly anxious-sounding jeers from the away supporters, it feels a little as though this could get ugly for the visitors. Southampton are playing with the sort of fluidity that you’d expect from a team which now hasn’t lost in the league since the 23rd September. But Walsall do settle into the game as the half progresses and do manage to create a couple of half-chances themselves. They’re only a goal down at the break.

By the time the half-time whistle blows, I’m already at the bar buying a pint and a hot dog which has a very distinctive smell which isn’t of meat. The half-time scores come through on a big screen which is reminding me to “be in that number” by buying something or other. It’s a phrase of which the club’s marketing department seem very fond. If there hadn’t been such a queue at half-two, I might have marched into the club shop myself. See, this is how they get you.

And sometimes, football can be very similar across great areas. League Two is six divisions above the Isthmian League Division One South-East, but when Mara does take his chance to double the Southampton lead by rocketing the ball into the roof of the Walsall goal ten minutes into the second half I am reminded of Littlehampton Town similarly spurning and opportunity for a half-time reset to have much effect. Conceding a second goal early in the second half probably finishes Walsall off for the afternoon. At 1-0, you’re only one break from being back on terms and being able to see the whites of their eyes. At 2-0, they’re starting to pull away into the distance.

It’s probably appropriate that matters are settled by Ryan Fraser and Che Adams. These are both quite clearly Premier League players; just the ease with which they move around the pitch. Fraser adds a third goal midway through the half to end any lingering hopes that Walsall may have had of somehow finding a way back into the match, and then Adams, who’s been introduced as a substitute, is put through to add a fourth, with a Walsall defending valiantly but unsuccessfully sliding to try and stop the ball from crossing the line. Southampton are comfortably through to the Fourth Round; it hasn’t felt in much doubt all afternoon.

The club shop is a little quieter as I start my walk back to the station. Deviant that I am, I stop off to take a photograph of the greatest away kit ever worn. The street is still lined with fast food vendors, the smell as rich in the air at 5.00 as it was two and a half hours earlier. I suspect that my walk back to Southampton Central is somewhat more circuitous than it needs to be after I eschew a bus back to the station in favour of walking—and please, Mayflower buses, it’s marching in; the Saints go marching in, not marching on, as it says on the front of your buses—but I’m still there in time to catch a direct train back to East Worthing. More or less the moment I sit down I fall asleep, and I don’t wake up again until the train pulls into West Worthing station, two stops and about eight minutes from home. Headlines, it would appear, have been made by Maidstone United, who we saw in the Second Qualifying Round of this year’s competition.

There’s nothing to criticise about Southampton, or about St Mary’s. The city centre itself is pleasant enough, though they could probably do with knocking down the derelict Toys R Us between the station and the town, or at least de-weed its car park. The ground itself is well appointed and located within a reasonable walking distance from the town centre, and the staff were uniformly friendly and efficient. I didn’t see any trouble all day, and the atmosphere around the ground was good all afternoon.

But when you watch a lot of non-league football, you do start to miss the freedoms that come with it quite quickly. I certainly missed not being able to wander the ground as I pleased, instead only being able to watch from this one particular spot. And when you go to big matches and watch from quite high up, it somehow all feels slower than it does if you’re watching a match from pitch level. And of course, it’s extremely difficult to offer anything like the ‘personal touch’ that you get at non-league grounds when there are more than 20,000 people in attendance.

It is an extremely good thing that this competition has, at this stage at least, fairly sensible ticket pricing. We live in an era in which the cost of going to the football at the level at which Southampton play is getting out of the reach of an increasing number of people. It is a good thing that there remain some matches for which the ticket pricing is lower. There seemed to be a lot of parents about with young kids, and it doesn’t seem unlikely that some of those kids will not have been regulars because their parents may not be able to regularly afford it. For them, rather than the inconvenience in the calendar that the FA Cup is now presumed to be, this may even have been quite a big day out.

And when people start complaining about the FA Cup and how it’s clogging up the schedule, this is the sort of detail that gets left out. There will be many young supporters of bigger clubs for whom this sort of draw might well be the only opportunity to get to step inside the home of their heroes throughout the whole season. I’m grateful for having had the chance to visit St Mary’s, for having had the chance to cross it off the list.

Southampton will likely hit a point when they meet a team who do to them what they did to Walsall this afternoon, and hopefully their supporters will have as an enjoyable a day out when they do as those who’d travelled down from the Midlands seemed to be having at their home. But try telling the 22,600 people here this afternoon that the FA Cup doesn’t matter any more, especially to those for whom this may be one of only a tiny number of visits here this season, and you may receive rather short shrift.