FA CUP 4TH ROUND
ALEX PENNY took to Twitter on Friday to tell his 1,775 followers about the magic of the FA Cup.
The Kidderminster Harriers defender might be tempted to press the delete button.
Penny was just 140 seconds away from adding his own fairy-tale chapter to the cup chronicles of glory and derring-do when the famous old competition delivered an agonising reminder that for every triumph there are also tears.
Harriers, a team trying to escape from the sixth-tier of the English game, led Premier League West Ham from the 19th-minute after Penny had gleefully swept them ahead.
Led Zeppelin front-man Robert Plant was one of 5,327 souls crammed into Aggborough.
Penny’s strike had him leaping around with all the glee of a teenager in the moshpit at Knebworth.
Kiddy, it seemed, were ascending the Stairway to Heaven. Especially when the tie reached injury-time with the Hammers still in hell.
But then Declan Rice came up with an equaliser good enough to illustrate why David Moyes reckons that £100million wouldn’t be enough to make West Ham sell.
He started and finished the move to take the game into extra-time, beating heroic Harriers keeper Luke Simpson with a bludgeoned finish that threatened to tear through the netting.
Thirty minutes later, fate conspired against the underdogs once more. This time decisively.
The injury-time board had just lit up again when Jarrod Bowen (above) bundled home Aaron Creswell’s cross.
Moyes couldn’t bring himself to celebrate either West Ham goal.
He knew Russell Penn’s underdogs deserved better.
At least Kidderminster have the consolation of a £500,000 windfall that will enable them to fix the floodlights.
Moyes, who opted to keep Michail Antonio in London after the striker had returned from international duty in Jamaica, also started with Rice, Thomas Soucek, Cresswell and Pablo Fornals on the bench.
It took him until half time to make the necessary changes.
But the Hammers boss would have suspected after about five minutes that it was going to be a tough afternoon. Kidderminster got on the front foot immediately, winning every loose ball and