Not up for the cup

The first weekend of the New Year is when the 3rd round of the FA Cup is played. In years, decades, gone by, this is when giant-killing acts take place, radio commentators talk about the romance of the cup mention the phrase 'cup fever' a regular intervals.

But in truth the shine has been taken off the Cup for a while; only one replay allowed, that time Man Utd were allowed NOT to take part, and now teams use the cup not as a means to obtain glory, but to test new players or rest their regulars.

The fact that many clubs are not taking the 'worlds oldest football competition' seriously, and so fans are beginning to be turned off it to. The Cup IS the world's oldest football competition, and the FA can trace this back to the first time it was run in 1871. It should be a slam dunk to make this compulsive viewing, but it isn't. In a world where some players get £300,000 a week for kicking a ball about, and survival in the Premier League, or progressing in the Champions League means millions or tens of millions of pounds heading their way, is it any surprise that Paul lambert said what many have us gotten the impression of these past few years: that the cup is an inconvenience, and Premier League managers would rather do without it.

For my team, their greatest moments have come in The Cup; knocking out Liverpool in 1908 to beating the Busby Babes 3-0 in 1959, Carrow Road used to rock on its foundations come cup time. Yesterday, we hosted Fulham at the Carra, and just 21,000 turned up. Better than at many grounds were attractive games were witnessed by banks of empty seats, and goals celebrated with a attitude that suggested they knew it didn't really matter. Games were played at the pace of a pre-season friendly, with the result to be avoided wasn't a defeat, but a draw.

The draw was made Sunday afternoon with 5 ties still to be played, which made quite a mess of the draw with lots of ifs and ors. Would it have been so hard to have it when all the games today had finished?

Football is in a mess. But football,especially the Premier League sees only wonderful things. It covets money over sporting competition, and The Premier League, like European Football exists to maintain the status quo rather than encourage a new team to join the elite top four. Because the sponsors want to see the same teams in Europe of on Super Sunday week in week out, that's what happens. Last season Norwich finished in 11th place, just 7 places shy of being in the Champions League. But Norwich have no hope of ever qualifying for that, as the players needed to bridge that gap would cost so much. You need to be already in the CL to afford to pay their wages, or have a rich sugar daddy to pick up the bill.

In draws for the CL and major International competitions, the draws are rigged, or in the case of the CL a league system has been brought in so to smoothe out the occasional rogue result. Once the league phase has finished, clubs know that in the draw they can't draw this club, or that club. All this does is make almost certain the biggest most successful clubs progress year after year, so they can pick up more and more prize money so they can go and hoover up the top talent from their challengers.

When a sport forgoes sporting chance to chase big bucks it is dead. Or dying. Nothing in football is going to change much, if at all. Folks at work find it odd that I don't support Man Utd or Chelski or Citeh or whoever in Europe. Things is if any English teams win it, it makes absolutely no difference to the rest of the Premier League at all. All I ask is that I am entertained when I watch a game. And as all domestic football is pretty much on sports channels and in 18 months we will be denied just on CL game a week as it moves lock, stock and suitcase stuffed full of cash to BT sports, I won't be watching any European football at all.

If people are being priced out of going to see the game in person by £50 tickets, and will be priced out from even watching it on TV. If this is the case then how will the next generation get to love the game? Without the next generation, the game will wither, and the rich and the great will also lose interest. What then the Cup?