That sound you hear? Could be my teeth gnashing......

 I made the mistake of sitting through the seemingly endless FA Cup 1st Round highlights package the other day.  Big mistake.  Rather than my enjoy the ups and downs, the great goals and the great stories three competingly dark thoughts ran around my head.

"How come THEY are in the FA Cup 1st round and we don't get as much as a sniff anymore?"

There are truly some obscure outfits regularly popping up in the First Round nowadays.  Why are Camberwick Green Rovers and Tweedle Dum FC beating Football League teams with gay abandon when we can't get past teams like Sutton Bloody Coldfield, Nant Bloody Wich and Bamber Bloody Bridge?  And there's so many non-league teams in the First and Second Rounds Proper these days.  I'm certain when we used to get so far in the competition there were almost no non-league teams left.  Now they clutter up the fixtures with their battling displays and heart-warming stories.  Yesterday's Second Round draw guarantees at least three non-league teams will still be in the competition when the Big Boys join in.  Obviously Spurs will draw one of them and put thirty goals past them to take our place as all time top scorers.....

Part of me wants to applaud the efforts of fellow non-league teams in getting so far in the FA Cup, but I fear a far more substantial part of me (roughly 99%) wants them all to fail and for us to still be in there, which, had we not lent Brett out in the midst of a contagious pandemic we might still have been.  Still, he got some useful game time....

"Since when did those crappy little teams we used to beat for fun get such fantastic stadiums?"

There are a depressingly large number of clubs that were so far in our rear mirror a decade ago, with dog-rough facilities and a tar-pit for a pitch who seem to be playing matches in brand new stadiums on billiard table flat pitches.  I mean, c'mon!  Isn't it enough we've traded in Rockingham Road for a poorly draining bog in Burton?  Does everyone else really have to choose the exact same moment to open new super-stadia with professionally manicured lawns for pitches?  Talk about taking the piss!

"THEY are a Football League Club?  How the f*ck did that happen?"

I've watched enough of Quest channel on a Saturday night to finally accept that the likes of Morecambe, Stevenage, Crawley, Forest Green, Burton Albion,  Cheltenham, f*cking Barrow and, jeez...."Championship" Wycombe (!) are actual Football League clubs.  Playing in the Football League.  On merit.  Even f*cking Barrow.

But I draw the line at seeing Harrogate listed as one of the "92".  Actually, Harrogate qualify for all three of my desperate questions.  They are in the Cup, they've got a greatly augmented ground AND somehow they're in the Football League!  

When we last played Harrogate at their place, a dozen years ago when we were on our way to the Conference North title, and they were hanging on to a place in that division, plying their trade in their homely stadium.  I recall chatting to an ancient Harrogate supporter who confided to me that (a rather bored) JP Marna was the classiest player he had ever seen...!

Back then we were on the way to Conference National, propelled by the dream team of Imraan's financial acumen and Mark Cooper's all-out-attacking flair, with the Football League our next step whilst Harrogate were looking at the Northern Premier League and fixtures against the likes of Sutton Bloody Coldfield, Nant Bloody Wich and Bamber Bloody Bridge.

Except, it didn't quite work out that way.  But if Harrogate's elevation manages to grind my gears I can only imagine the reaction of York City fans as they slithered down and then out of the Football League, and then slumped out of The National League into the Northern section while the team from the "village" just down the road effectively took their place.  York City fans aren't the most mentally stable at the best of times, so this must have totally blew their angry, entitled minds!

Actually, the thought of York City fans doing their impotent nut at the "unfairness" of Harrogate's success has quite cheered me right up again!  Hooray for Harrogate!

Betty's Cafe - no longer the most famous
place in Harrogate