Not a bit of it they lifted him on to their shoulders and carried

Not a bit of it; they lifted him on to their shoulders and carried him around the pitch. It’s peculiar that fans only show this level of sportsmanship when their team has been totally, completely humiliated.When our fans had finished being brilliant with Woking they expunged the pent-up poison in their bodies by mounting a demonstration calling for Brian Talbot to be sacked, which he was soon afterwards. It’s as though having been stripped of every last shred of self-respect by their team all they can cling to is their essential goodness. Exactly fourteen years ago I had the misfortune to witness Woking’s demolition of West Brom at The Hawthorns That was a terrible day. Odd then that I’m often asked, entirely without malice, if I was there.

This is a bit like asking if I was there the day my Grandad died: “Yes, I was at the Albion that day, it was absolutely awful. Thanks for asking.” But ultimately it wasn’t my misfortune to be there, it was a privilege. Because witnessing your club being giant-killed marks you out as a bigger fan than someone who has seen their club slay a giant – if only because every gutless fair-weather fan in the town turns up to see their David have a pop at a Goliath.I love seeing fans of the defeated giant desperately join in the carnival atmosphere. It’s like a big New Year resolution that’s broken irrevocably within a week – a heightened version of the usual fans’ experience of hope turned to disappointment, often with a mild element of shame or embarrassment.”In my experience there’s nothing mild about cup shame. A win is “just the springboard we need to improve our form in the league which is, after all, our bread and butter.” A defeat, on the other hand, “gives us the opportunity to concentrate on the league which is, after all, our bread and butter.”David Woodhouse, a Villa fan, thinks the timing of the third round is significant: “If we lose at Bramall Lane, the season is over for us. The implication being that they’ll trudge back home to live out the rest of their grey lives very quietly, occasionally cheering themselves by getting the press cuttings out about the day they went to Chelsea.I love the way a cup result is invariably portrayed as a positive outcome, win or lose.

It’s easier that way.And win or lose we’ll be assured at some stage that Scunthorpe have enjoyed the “biggest day out of their lives”. We’ll be shown the swanky restaurants of the Kings Road and the chip shops of Scunthorpe. There are chip shops in Chelsea and restaurants in Scunthorpe, but cameras won’t have pointed at either this week. All Chelsea fans will be portrayed as rich; all Scunthorpe fans as impoverished. By now television producers will have scoured Scunthorpe for stereotypes of the frozen north: a bloke in clogs; a lame whippet scavenging for discarded batter bits; anything cobbled; a cake in a baker’s shop window with “Play Up Town!” scrawled across it in cheery icing.There’s probably more cobbles on the streets around the extravagantly expensive mews properties off the Fulham Road, but I doubt we’ll see them.

It’s as though the media need to impose some kind of order where it can seem there is none.This weekend this will most clearly manifest itself in coverage of the Chelsea-Scunthorpe match. Romance, in my dictionary, is “a series of unusual adventures”.Perhaps it’s because cup adventures are so unusual – the form book goes out the window, don’t forget – that a curiously standardised language has evolved to describe them. Until about 30 seconds ago I found this usage puzzling but upon looking it up I’ve found a definition which seems peculiarly apposite. (No, I’m not sure what neologisms are either, but the theory seems plausible).Entry number one in chapter one of a (non-alphabetical) cup clich?ictionary would be romance, as in “the romance of the cup”. It’s a dictionary of football-speak, a fine collection of clich? It comes to mind today because for some reason FA Cup third round weekend is to football clich?what bonfire night is to fireworks.David Woodhouse, co-author of the book, thinks this might be because, “the Football Association Challenge Cup is regarded as a more chivalrous competition than those horrible neologisms the Premiership, the Championship, League One, etc”. Not only did the authors take me to a pub and fill me with beer, they also put a quote from me on the front cover of a new edition of the book. I love being on the box and the radio and in this newspaper but I don’t think anything’s given me as much pleasure as seeing a quote from me on the front cover of a book The front cover, mark you, not the back It’s like my opinion really matters It feels great.
The book in question is Football Lexicon.

I warmly recommend recommending a book in a newspaper I did it for the first time, in this column, last year. The pitches on the high veldt are the quickest in South Africa and their may still be time for him to play a decisive role in this series.. Harmison’s loss of form could be down to a lack of proper bowling before the tour, or the way he is being used by Vaughan, but his chances of regaining it will not be helped by the departure of Troy Cooley, England’s fast bowling coach, who is returning to the United Kingdom to work with the England A side before they leave on their tour of Sri Lanka.But it is too early to write Harmison off. Harmison has taken seven wickets in the first three Test matches in South Africa, but he has conceded 432 runs in the process.And the pressure on him to perform in the last two Test matches will only increase should Andrew Flintoff fail to recover from the side strain he picked up in the third Test.Attempting to find the reasons why Harmison has returned to the wild and wayward bowler he was before 2004 is a puzzle England are currently unable to solve. The lanky fast bowler has been the most influential figure in Vaughan’s side since he took 7 for 12 against the West Indies in Jamaica in March. I have been working as hard as I did last year, and the ball is coming out of my hand at the same pace as before. But I am now bowling the odd four ball and this is releasing the pressure.”It is no coincidence that England have stuttered whilst Harmison has struggled.