Glad All Over

The long wait is worth it for this 61 year-old Eagle and his younger bro

Toss a coin six times. The odds of it coming up heads every time is 1:64. Enter the FA Cup in the third round and you’ve a 1:64 chance of lifting the trophy. Just need to win six matches. Straightforward, yes, but far from simple. Tougher still for those entering the competition at earlier stages, and they never (to date) go all the way to the final, let alone triumph there. Explains why so many fans, like me, end up believing their team’s time will never come. Ah, the magic of the Cup!

I was 26 by the time Crystal Palace reached our first FA Cup final. It was another 26 years until the second. I never knew whether a third would ever arrive in my lifetime, or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s why you do your best to master Abide With Me, belt out the National Anthem and vow, if you lose, that you won’t leave Wembley until the opposition captain brandishes the trophy. Graceless to be complicit in an emptying end at the final whistle.

Memo to the youngsters who’ve come with you to the final, who are too young to have experienced our club’s Dark Ages. You’re not beseeching God to save your monarch because you’re suddenly a patriotic zealot, or insisting on being in the ground over an hour before kick-off because you’ve lost faith in London’s transport system. It’s because you’re still pinching yourself that in a few hours’ time you might witness your team’s first major trophy. Maybe its only one.

Vital, then, to drink in every moment; to succumb to the FA Cup’s time-honoured rituals; not to worry about whether your vantage point is a good or a bad one. The point is simply to be there. There are no bad seats - simply your seat, and you won’t be sitting in it much anyway. Your view of the match is your own personal, definitive one. Later rewatching on screens big and small might alter perspectives on what actually happened during the 90 minutes, but that won’t change the result or your memories.

Palace’s vanquishing of Man City on Saturday was that 1:64 shot coming home. Was it the best time I’ve had supporting the club for 53 years? There are other occasions right up there alongside it. Making the semi-final way back in 1976 as a third division side, reaching our first final with a famous 4-3 extra time victory over the Liverpool team who’d humiliated us 9-0 earlier in the season, promotions gained, relegations avoided, bitter rivals beaten.

This, though, was the game with the greatest outcome. And I suspect it can never be bettered on that measure, because it is a first (and could be the only).

Whenever the FA tinkers with its flagship competition in any way there are howls of protest. Scrapping replays, semis at Wembley, broadcasters dictating schedules, sponsors being given undue visibility. All have provoked the ire of traditionalists in recent years, but to the governing body’s credit it has stuck steadfastly to the Cup’s basic format. Anyone can win it, whether entering at the Extra Preliminary Round stage in August or the Third Round Proper in January.

The year before Palace’s 1976 run to the semi final, JL Carr’s How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup was published. In it a village team defeats a string of first division clubs to win the trophy. Surreal, comedic and fantastical (Wanderers beat Glasgow Rangers in the final, evoking a footballing union of nations that will surely never occur), it nevertheless has strands which thread through today’s football reality. The team’s success is masterminded by the village doctor. A Hungarian no less. Where are the English managers? And the chairman, a local farmer, becomes a media personality with strong views on politics way beyond football.

I have a copy of the book ready to post to any future FA chair or CEO who might ever contemplate a change to the open opportunity for all that the FA Cup presents. I’ve returned to it at irregular intervals during the Eagles’ lean years.

Palace’s Cup triumph opens Europe’s borders. A place in the 36-team stage of the Europa League awaits. Another first for the club. Eight matches guaranteed, half of them in South London. The prospect of a trip overseas to support my team is enticing, but knowing there will be at least four opportunities somewhat dilutes the excitement.

UEFA’s club tournaments are neither fish nor fowl. Part league, part knockout. As I argued in last week’s Sport inc., teams need only target a top 24 finish in the league stages. Excelling carries little reward bar removing one of the knockout rounds. I daren’t save my cash in expectation of using my passport next Spring at the pointy end of the competition, however. What if this is our one and only European tour and we don’t make it that far? Best I bookmark the Skyscanner website now.

Winning the FA Cup could have many consequences beyond European travel, not all of them necessarily positive, and certainly not predictable. Playing staff and manager; club ownership; stadium infrastructure: all subject to heightened expectations and accompanying risk. My one wish, wherever these cards all fall, is that no sense of entitlement creeps into the club and our fans. Nothing would be more charmless. And after all, this first time might indeed be the last. For now, though, I can officially die happy.

Wembley did shake… And it was beautiful.

Poptastic!

The Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over was released on 15 November 1963 when I was just shy of three months old. It was first played at Selhurst Park two months later and has been the soundtrack of the highs and lows of my entire Palace-watching lifetime. Just a shame that modern DigiBoards have consigned the accompanying thumping of advertising hoardings to the dustbin of history.

Sofa or Ryanair?

The FA has established its Cup rounds as long weekend affairs dictated by terrestrial TV broadcast contracts. In spite of supporter grumbles, to date it has got away with it. Now rugby’s governing bodies are similarly testing fan goodwill in staging the opening match of next year’s Six Nations at 21:10 Paris time on a Thursday night.

Fine for us couch potatoes who fancy a high octane encounter between France and Ireland with no more onerous a trip than to the fridge for another beer. Something else entirely for those Irish supporters organising a traditional weekend jaunt to watch the match in person. Expect much trumpeting of record viewing figures next February to draw attention from a little further shrivelling of rugby’s soul.

Levelling up agenda

Katherine Grainger from UK Sport to BOA. Now Nick Webborn from BPA to UK Sport. The chair shuffling at the heart of British Olympic and Paralympic sport is now complete. Webborn, long a distinguished servant of para sport in various roles, now has the chance to correct the baffling imbalance in funding between TeamGB and ParalympicsGB sports and athletes that has long rankled.

Headline comparisons over-simplify what is a complex funding equation, in which UK Sport deploys a fixed pot of lottery cash to maximise medal table outcomes in both Games. But they are very stark nonetheless. TeamGB’s squad for Paris consisted of 327 athletes; ParalympicsGB selected 215. UK Sport’s investment into Britain’s Olympic sports for the Los Angeles cycle totals £255 million; for its Paralympic ones just £75 million. (Personal grants for individual athletes are an addition to both of these sums).

A quick bit of division suggests average funding of roughly £780k per selected athlete at the Olympics versus £350k per Paralympian.

If all goes well, Webborn could have as much as eight years at the head of UK Sport. I’m hoping, though, that he makes funding equality an urgent priority for his first 100 days.

What happens in Vegas

The inaugural drug-fuelled Enhanced Games will take place in Las Vegas next May. Of course they will. Can’t think of a more appropriate host, apart perhaps from Mar-a-Lago (after all, Donald Trump Jr is one of the initiative’s financial backers). Considered reflections in next week’s Sport inc.