Blue Square South Guide

   Up for the cup, now down with a frown

The thing with the ‘magic of the FA Cup’ is that, if you subscribe to it, you can’t really complain when fate crams a dusty dog-log through your letterbox rather than streamers and glitter.

To cut a long story short, there will be no cup run for Havant & Waterlooville this year.

For the first season in four, we will not be lining up in the rounds proper. The rounds proper were being consoled by relatives last night.

Chippenham Town might well be however, having beaten us 2-1 at West Leigh Park, and the very best of luck to them in the 4th qualifying round.

They are now just 90 minutes from them potentially lucrative propers. The Chips n’ Ham have been there twice before but four years ago their reward was a home game (and then losing replay) against Worcester City and in 1951/52 they made a trip to Leyton. Not even for a game against Orient either, only the east London town’s non-League reps.

In circumstances like these, one might say, well, we’ve had our fun for three years, we’ve been greedy really, perhaps Chippenham are due some funtime boppery.

However, missing out will always tweak the old regret, and being the scalped rather than the scalper can do nothing but hurt.

We will now clutch hold of that famous straw (y’know, the “opportunity to focus on the league campaign” straw) like a child clinging onto their mother’s leg as their first day of school is about to begin.

Yet, the nature of our second half collapses at home in the last two weeks is starting to chip away at the confidence a little bit.

Still, at least we can now distract ourselves by taking a keener interest than usual in the Hampshire Senior Cup which, for us, begins on Tuesday away at Hythe & Dibden.

A mug’s a mug, I guess.

   Posted by skif at 09:16:32             1 comments             Leave a comment