The magic of the Cup

I love the FA Cup, my days following the "Glorious Gooner Gunners" meant I've seen many great games and finals but since giving up the sky premiership circus my love affair with this fantastic competition has however not been as exciting and fun filled. Far from it in fact.  Tooting and Mitcham have quite a good record in the FA Cup but of course I've missed all that. The cup run in 1959 and the defeat by Nottingham Forest is still sung about on the Bog End terraces despite the fact that most who stand on there weren't born then. A couple of runs in the 70's and which lead to games against Swindon and Crystal Palace and Bradford are still talked about by older Terrors as great moments in the clubs history. The game in the 1st Round in 2005 an away tie against Stockport was a well attended game by a large group of drunken South Londoners who saw the club loose 5-0. But it's not all about victorious games and celebrating winning trophies when following a club like Tooting and Mitcham, if we wanted victories and a packed trophy cabinet we'd all go and watch Crystal Palace.

 

But as my time following the Terrors only stretches back about 12 years my memories of FA Cup glory are very limited. A game in 2013 at Leatherhead which as per normal ended in defeat which sticks forever in my mind for their goalie getting his shorts pulled down by a couple of herberts with the travelling bogend when he was about to take a goal kick. The following week in a league game there we lost 5-1 and In the second half Bogend Ant got stung by a wasp which caused quite a scene and yet again made me question my decision to take the poor little sod to games.... especially ones in Leatherhead. They had also beaten us in the FA Cup the year before... and in the league which we both attended.  I've never seen TMUFC beat Leatherhead which makes them one of the 73 boogie teams the Terrors currently have at the moment. Leatherhead along with Berlin have had a wall that fell down in resent history and helped changed the course of events afterwards. Ask any Dulwich fan for an explanation if you get the chance.

Then the season after there was a very small FA Cup run that took us to "Mighty" Bishops Stortford after a last minute winner took us past Cray Wanderers. We dominated the game getting a draw before beating them at Imperial Fields. memorable for some of The Bishop supporters who turned up, called us minnows and refused to buy programmes and entre the "golden goals competition"etc. so as not to give any money what so ever to TMUFC and acted like total smug bell ends in the knowledge that they were a "bigger" club. Their manager was also a lovely smug prick of a man who got sacked shortly afterwards. Some victories are made even better when the opponents fans are class A twats. Of course we lost to East Thurrock in the next round but both the Stortford games were special. Now I'm not saying all Bishop Stortford fans are wankers, just the ones I've met and the ones I've spoken to.

Bog End Ant, Leader of the Tooty Wooty Boot Boys taking total liberties over at Bishops Stortford


Nothing else springs to mind since then apart from various other defeats the in worlds greatest cup competition.... But maybe this could be the year. A great crowd of over 300 turned up on a wet and windy Friday night to watch us beat Horley Town, A game moved to Friday due to the Pink and Blue Squatters having a "Home" league game on the Saturday which out ranked the FA Cup for some reason... But in truth the Friday night thing worked, of course the victory helped but the bigger than expected crowd and the packed bar meant that the Bank Holiday weekend started with a bang and an awful lot to drink for many. We were "Blessed" with a couple of Sutton United Supporters including the world famous musical sex machine @bornatotter who knows a lot about the magic of the FA Cup and the magic of FA Cup songs. All of us wait with baited breath to see who Sutton get when they enter the FA Cup this season, while he stares at his guitar dreaming of Pop Stardom and the chance to get on Football Focus again as the comedy time filling bit at the end. We'll I'm hopping to get either Spurs or Man United in the next round... We'll probably end up with bloody Leatherhead again... Let hope it pisses down with rain.....