WESTSIDE GLORY
Cup dream alive... just another 13 wins to go!
JUST 31 days after Arsenal lifted the FA Cup at Wembley for a record 14th time after their triumph over Chelsea, the football season proper started again this week.
Not the Community Shield, forget that – that’s just a glorified friendly, flag waving for the big boys.
No. The FA Cup – the world’s oldest cup competition, started again, just a month after it had finished. The dream started again, for clubs, players and fans, across the country.
Not the same dream as Arsenal have, obviously, because that comes true as often as not. For the teams that took part in the Extra Preliminary round – in the 182 ties that were played on Tuesday and last night, the dream will remain a dream. But make no mistake – this was the real thing.
For 20 of the teams this week, this was their debut in the FA Cup, the first time the door had creaked open.
Two of them, Billingshurst of the Southern Combination League Divison One, and Westside, of the Combined Counties League first division, met in deepest Sussex.
Billingshurst, after four years of applying, had finally got the nod this summer.
For Westside, a team born out of the Westside Church in Wandsworth and formed only in 1996, it is only their second season at this level. l. Both are non- league Step 6 sides – level 10 in the national set- up – the lowest level for which you qualify to play for the old pot.
Westside chairman ( and nd physio), founder and retired d civil servant Graham Holder ( inset) – one of the five still left at a club that played in their first match in the parks of Kingston in 1996 – agreed: “This was such a big moment, the biggest in our history.
“It’s massive. Just for the lads to say they had played in the FA Cup is something.
“In September 1996 we walked out for our first game and put the nets up in a park in Wandsworth.
“H Here we are 24 years later, and there t are five guys left including myself, who were in that team. I was player- manager.”
It was a tough, hard- tackling scrap on Tuesday at the tree- lined Jubilee Fields, but in the end a classy Westside, quicker to the ball, sharper, more skilful, won 2- 0, with goals in each half from Sian Forsythe and Tevon Webster. For Billingshurst, the dream was over.
Crestfallen chairman Kevin Tilley, who had mowed and marked out the pitch before kick- off, said: “This was our first time in the FA Cup in 129 years – a long time coming. We didn’t turn up. There were nerves. We will be back.”
Into the Sussex night trooped the crowd, a good 100 up on Billingshurst’s normal gate.
And for Westside – only 13 games to go, lads, before Wembley glory is yours.