FA Cup Fever? Just me then...

As I quaff the last of the Christmas Weissbiers and shove the tinsel on top of the wardrobe for another year, it can mean only one thing, FA Cup Third Round Weekend! Not that anyone else gets that excited about that any more.

When I was a kid, the Cup was king. We didn't run round the playground dreaming of scraping into fourth place in the league in them days. No, we dreamt of the twin towers, Wembley, scoring the winning goal at the tunnel end and wiping the mud off our mitts to shake hands with The Queen.

If dreams were romantic, the actual football was blood and guts, do-or-die stuff and as penalty shoot-outs hadn't come in, sometimes epic in proportion, with third and even fourth relays sometimes necessary. The Cup WAS football.

Apart from anything else, if it wasn't a World Cup year, The FA Cup Final was pretty much the only live football screened on the telly, other than England V Scotland and it was so important it was on both channels, so the choice of viewing was football with David Coleman, football with Brian Moore or over on BBC2, the Open University and Play Away repeats with Brian Cant and Toni Arthur. Most people opted for the cup!

“Seven times we've won it, no-one else can catch us up” we used to sing with glee. One small problem though. We hadn't won it. Not in my lifetime and the thought of going to a Wembley FA Cup Final in the flesh became an obsession and the Cup itself the Holy Grail as far as I was concerned. Winning the league when I was fifteen, Champions of Europe when I was sixteen were both bloody marvellous, but it would be the year 2000 and at the very last available opportunity before they knocked the old stadium down that I would get that afternoon of my dreams. Okay, the dream turned into a bit of a nightmare on the day, but I'm still so glad I got to go.

So to the modern day and with riches of the Premier League and the allure of the Champions League taking the time and attention of the big clubs, the FA Cup is now the poor relation, no longer the pinnacle of the football season but to many just an annoying sideshow. Empty seats will abound at most of the third round ties, where once grounds were packed to the rafters.

Winning now provides a route into the equally unloved and unsupported Europa League and with TV coverage now languishing on an ITV that would rather promote Ice Skating “Celebrities” and ESPN, we don't get the satellite shows around the live matches that build up the excitement by trading on the competitions illustrious past.

I'm looking forward to FA Cup Third Round day but many, nay most of my Villa supporting buddies aren't even bothering to attend.

I'll be there and I suppose that makes me a dinosaur, but I'm hoping against hope that I'm not still around to see the FA Cup become extinct.