THE ROAD TO WEMBLEY
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
ENGLISHMEN admire solid worth. They hang its picture in art galleries. They preach' about it from pulpits. They raise it to the peerage. But they do not love it. They much prefer luck, especially the luck that helps small men to beat big ones or an outsider to beat the favourite. A football team must be con- sistently good to win the First Division Championship. On Satulday after Saturday, through forty-two games, in all sorts of conditions and on 'all sorts of grounds, it has to hold a good deal more than its own. That is the real test of football worth. Yet there is no team in the country which really makes the Championship its main target. When teams are knocked out of The Cup, you do hear them say : ".Thank Goodness ! Now we can concentrate on the League." But that is just stiff upper lip. Teams running for the Championship can lose all heart after a Cup-tie defeat, while a run in The Cup puts new fire into teams facing relegation. The Championship is a footballer's living and a football manager's business. It is their bread and butter. But neither footballers nor football managers can live by bread alone ; their secret hearts yearn for The Cup.
Some people imagine that this year's Cup competition began last Saturday when 64 teams went at each other in the mud. But, in . fact, by the time there are only 64 teams left, the competition' is rising towards its climax. Any one of the 30,000 amateur and professional clubs affiliated to the Football Association can enter for the competition by paying los. Many of them do, and fight their first battles in the Extra Preliminary Round of the Qualifying Competition some time back in the first week of September. On through September they go, through October and November, scraping through the next Preliminary Round, scraping through four other rounds, until in December they find themselves in the First Round of the competition proper. Through all these rounds the slaughter is terrible. Little all-amateur teams, little workshop teams with perhaps one old professional as player-manager, teams of assorted amateurs and part-time professionals, all stride confidently from rickety pavilions on to grounds where there are no grand- stands, and go down fighting before a few hundred faithful supporters. As the winning teams make their way into another round, they begin to see, far away, the great broad avenue which leads to Wembley Stadium, to hear, not the spasmodic shouts of a windswept handful, but -the sustained roar of great crowds ; and they say to each other : "Perhaps this is our year." Our year. Our year to hit the head- lines. Our year to be the giant-killers. And they know that that could happen, that almost every year it does happen to sonic unknown team. Therein lies The Cup's glory.
Do you remember how little Walsall met Arsenal in 1933, when Arsenal were at the peak of their fame, and how Walsall beat Arsenal by two goals to nothing ? Do you remember the shouts of joy which greeted that result) Do you remember, for that matter, the nauseat- ing titters which last year greeted Colcheste.r's defeat of Hudders- field Town ? Year after year some little team fights its way through. Then, in the Third Round of the Competition Proper, it meets one of the lordly clubs, which till that moment has been allowed to watch from the sidelines, and lays it low. Last Saturday it was Yeovil Town (late Yeovil and Petters United) who put out Second Division Bury by three goals to one and may well do as much in the next round for First Division Sunderland. And when next September in the Extra Preliminary Round of the Qualifying Competition, the Anfield Plains meet the Walker Celtics, each team will say to itself : "This is our year. Our year to do a Yeovil on the lot of them." Xnd it may be.
Saturday brought us to the Third Round of the Competition proper. Into the hat for the draw went the survivors from all those pre- liminary rounds, plus the teams from the First and Second Divisions. From that moment it is every club for itself. There ate no• more exemptions. Lordliest and lowliest must take what the draw brings ; and the draw can bring some funny things. No two grounds are alike to play on. Where a ground is wholly surrounded by stands, the gusts of wind can come suddenly and play tricks with the ball. That, at any rate, is my explanation of why a Spurs free kick from the half way swerved into the goal and beat Huddersfield in a Cup- tie in the 'thirties at White Hart Lane. Not all the playing pitches are level. One has quite a hollow near the corner flag. Another slopes steeply from one touch line to the other. A third may have the slope running from one goal to the other. Nor are all playing pitches the same size. They must be within the limits set by the Football Association, but there is quite a margin between the maximum and minimum. Obviously, therefore, it is a great advantage to be playing on your own ground. You are used to it. You know where that hollow is. You feel at home. But if, at home, you have been used to playing on a full-size ground like Stamford Bridge, where there is plenty of room behind the goal lines, you feel cramped and hemmed in by the crowd. I once saw Joe Hulme fly down the wing on a small ground and crash into the spectators because he could not pull up in time. That can unsettle a whole team.
But there is an even greater advantage about playing at home ; and that is that you are playing before your own supporters. It is true that for Cup Ties many supporters will travel by rail or motor- coach almost from one end of the country to the other, following their team. But there never can be enough of such enthusiasts to out- number the home team's doorstep supporters ; and those supporters will be worth at least a goal on their own. When Bury went to Yeovil they had to play not only the team but the whole town—and a town, moreover, made fervid by success. In the match I saw, at Queen's Park Rangers, it was the home crowd, rather than the home team, which all but snatched a win from Huddersfield. For, in the second half of a dull game, with the score still o—o, Rangers began to press and the crowd decided that this was the moment to come in behind them. There followed, for a good five minutes, that high, expectant, half-hysterical cry that comes from a crowd when it scents victory. That cry can turn ordinary attackers into raging demons—or the most stalwart defender into a quivering aspen. It whipped the Rangers forwards into inspired onslaughts which all but won the game.
All but.. . . That, in a nutshell, is the Cup-Tie story of a thousand teams. It will be the Cup-Tie story again this year of every team bar one. Which team will be that one ? Not even Lyndoe will risk telling you that. But I will, though because the expected never happens in Cup-Ties and because this particular team only drew last Saturday and so is not 'yet certain even of being in the Fourth Round, I must ask the printer to put its name in the smallest type he has. It is Bolton Wanderers.
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