The FA Cup First Qualifying Round: All creatures great & small
It's the First Qualifying Round of the FA Cup, as the 2023/24 season continues to lumber to life, with Fatboy Slim and a bracing burst of Bon Jovi.
Of all the tiny ceremonies that go towards making a football match an event, a club’s run out music is probably the one that I really enjoy the most. If you get to a football match early enough, it can become easy to forget the reason why you're there in the first place, but there will be a point at about five to three when shit becomes real.
The PA system crackles to life, and the teams take to the pitch in that strange way that they have done for the last few years, walking out side by side, then along in line shaking hands with people that they clearly do not wish to shake hands with, like local dignitaries at a factory it that has been identified as politically expedient to visit.
And as with all football, it's better the crappier it is. At enorm-o-domes built with plate glass & steel, with full speakers half-buried in the ground, this isn't an issue. The bass alone will probably make your fillings dance along in time to any music, whether they want to or not. But at smaller grounds, the modern penchant for spectacle can run headfirst into the realities of playing in front of crowds of a couple of hundred.
The quirks are being ironed out of football these days, even at the lower ends of the senior game. Bad pitches are becoming a thing of the past. If players look overweight these days, it's likely because they've been overdoing the protein shakes rather than because they've been getting through five pints of heavy a day for the last twelve years.
It should, of course, be the law that every football club in both East & West Sussex takes to the pitch to "Sussex By The Sea", a song best known to football supporters as that idiosyncratic piece of early twentieth century parping that you can sometimes hear under the exhortations of the Sky Sports commentary team to watch the match that you've just switched over to watch, as Brighton & Hove Albion take to the pitch for their home matches.
But "Sussex By The Sea" doesn't just belong to Brighton & Hove Albion. If anything, it is a county-wide anthem which can still be heard at civic events from time to time. I once heard it coming from a bandstand in Horsham, which is as close to being "by the sea" as Gatwick Airport is. And of course, no-one really knows the words apart from the final refrain of "You can tell them all that we stand or fall for Sussex by the sea", and even the first part of that changed to "And we're going up to win the cup" years ago. In Brighton & Hove, at least.
Up at Worthing on Bank Holiday Monday, I'd been surprised to hear it make a return there, where the run out music had for the previous few years been a song which is something of a staple of this extremely niche genre, "Fanfare For The Common Man" by Emerson Lake & Palmer. But this season Worthing seem to be trying something different, and with the sound of slightly naive pre-World War One camaraderie ringing in the players' ears, Worthing had won that match against Weymouth to stay top of the National League South table. COINCIDENCE? Probably.
Of all the grounds in Sussex where you might expect to hear it, Culver Road, the home of both Lancing Football Club and the Sussex County FA, might be fairly near the top of the list, but instead the assembled 263 people in attendance are instead treated to another modern staple of the run out music genre, "Right Here Right Now" by Fatboy Slim, as the players make their leisurely stroll out onto the pitch.
It's appropriate, in a sense. Norman Cook has been a Brighton resident for decades now, even if he isn't born and bred, and furthermore, in an extremely literal sense, this is an ‘event’. There is definitely a football match taking place, right here, right now. Well, in a few minutes, after the players have shuffled past each other faintly touching hands, the coin toss, and a few minutes of standing around while the pitch is cleared of pre-match debris. But whether a match between Lancing and Carshalton Athletic in the First Qualifying Round of the FA Cup is, with the greatest of respect, worthy of such bombast is open to question. “All creatures great and small” has its limits.
There are ways in which you can make an FA Cup tale out of this match. Lancing are 15th in the Isthmian League Division One South East, while Carshalton are fourth in the Premier Division. It would hardly be a shot heard round the world, but a home win would be something of a surprise result.
Considering that it's fairly modern and an entirely adequate facility for a club the size of Lancing, there is something mildly unsatisfactory about Culver Road as a club ground. At the main turnstile there are two large signs, one welcoming you to the home of Lancing FC, the other to the home of the Sussex County FA. The latter is considerably more prominent, with the former being obscured behind an open gate.
This is a theme which continues inside the ground, which doesn't quite *feel* like Lancing's home. The team wears yellow and blue, but the ground is either neutrally coloured or decked out in the blue and white of the Sussex County FA. There are decent views from most positions and sitting in the main stand offers a nice view across to the South Downs. The people are friendly. There are plenty of reasons to recommend it. But there are also goals scattered around the edge of the pitch - a real scourge of the non-league game, especially at clubs with artificial surfaces who may use them for training and for private hire.
And I get it, I get it, I get it. I am luddite, for not approving of these artificial pitches. This is most definitely my problem, rather than non-league football's problem. I absolutely understand why clubs get them installed. They go a long way towards ensuring that matches which might otherwise have been postponed get played, and what clubs can generate from leasing them out not only brings in much-needed revenue but also can help to forge strong bonds with local communities, which can benefit everybody. But… eh. I just can’t get on with them, and even though I’m used to them, I’m increasingly finding that if I have a choice between two matches with one on grass and the other on 3g, I’ll go for the match played on a natural surface.
Neither of these two teams have a particularly fine FA Cup pedigree. Carshalton have reached the First Round of the FA Cup five times and the Second Round once, but they've never beaten a Football League club in the competition. Indeed, despite the fact that they've made the competition proper six times before, they've only previously played League opposition twice, losing to Torquay United in 1992 and Barnet in 1993. Lancing's record is substantially more modest. They've only got past the Second Qualifying Round once since 1967, while their best ever season in the competition came in 1952, while they were still called ‘Lancing Athletic’, when they reached the Fourth Qualifying Round before losing 5-1 to Newport Isle of Wight.
It's always worth remembering that for a vast number of entrants in this competition, even reaching the point of the FA Cup at which most people start to pay any attention whatsoever can feel like a herculean task. To reach the First Round Proper of the FA Cup, Lancing would have to win six matches, one more than Premier League clubs have to win to reach the final itself. And they don't have to deal with replays any more, either.
Norman fades out eventually, and a football match fades in. Different matches at different times of the year have different timbres, and the tempo of a match played at this time of the year is slow, slow, slow slow, slow, quick quick, drinks break, slow. Nobody’s quite in peak physical condition yet after half a dozen competitive games, and everything feels a little sluggish and careless.
But despite the modest crowd, it still feels like an ‘event’, of sorts. There’s a group of home supporters who may or may not have been in the bar since it opened, singing and barracking the players. And Carshalton are at a sufficiently high level of the game to have an away following. There’s probably something like 50 to 100 of them dotted around the ground and collected behind the goal.
And not only do Lancing score, just short of the half hour, but they hold their lead until half-time. With a division and a half between the teams and Lancing’s modest record in this competition, this is something of a surprise, but not as much as the one I get when the PA system belts out “Livin on a Prayer” from a speaker almost immediately behind me at half-time. Yes, yes, yes. “We’re half-way there.” Very good. I suspect that somebody in the PA room was feeling very pleased with themselves about that particular gag.
(You may wish to turn the volume down for this clip.)
Play opens up in the second half as everybody loosens up a bit. Carshalton press and press, and find a way back into the game with just over ten minutes still to play with an equaliser. Carshalton could probably do without a replay the following Tuesday night, even though they should really win it comfortably, but a draw is more welcome than getting knocked out. For Lancing, there’s a feeling that this opportunity was as about as good as things were going to get. The following Monday, the winners of the replay are drawn at home to Kingstonian, who are currently in 18th place in the Isthmian League Premier Division, the same division as Carshalton.
This is where you see their opportunity starting to open up. This is a winnable fixture, should they get past Lancing. And then they’re just two games from a place in the First Round proper and the possibility of a significant payday. There are many things that we can criticise about the FA Cup—most of them new ‘innovations’—but these seem almost belong to a different competition to this one. And perhaps that’s how we should look at, these days. For clubs of this size, the ‘final’ comes well before the biggest clubs roll their eyes and decide that they’d better get on with winning it.
That’s all a long way away. It’s the 1st September. The new season is just starting, and at least for another three days all involved can say that they’re still in the FA Cup. Neither of these sides are going to win the FA Cup this year, and it remains more likely than not that either will even get to the First Round. But that’s not what football is about at this time of the season. After any period of hibernation, you’re going to feel a little groggy. The qualifying rounds of the FA Cup shake everyone awake with some properly competitive football and bring in some additional money.
And for hopeless old romantics like me, yes, they are an event. The Extra Preliminary Round was played while the Premier League was still on its summer holidays, and the matches grow in intensity as the evenings start to draw in and the leaves start to fall from the trees. The First Round of the competition will be played to a background smell of recently-discharged fireworks and bonfires, coming as it does on the weekend of the 4th November. The winners of the replay will be half-way there, but things are only going to get more challenging.