Tamworth demonstrate the costs of abandoning FA Cup replays

Some reflections on Sunday's cup match between Tamworth and Spurs. What does this mean for both clubs, and what might it have ended up meaning?

It wasn’t just that by the time that ninety minutes had been played that the score between Tamworth and Spurs was still 0-0. It was that the non-league team had been arguably the better of the two over the course of those minutes, and that they’d done enough to warrant the replay which, until this season, would have been their right.

It’s been estimated that the National League club will have made around £250,000 from their run to this year’s Third Round of the FA Cup, a tidy sum for a club in the bottom half of what is effectively the fifth division. But it could have been a lot more. Gate receipts are shared for FA Cup matches, so if The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was anywhere near full for such a match, even at reduced prices, they would have made another fortune from that one match alone.