A good weekend for the Cup
I don't know what the BBC Sport weekend just gone looked like at home, but for those of us involved it was one of the most hectic we can remember.
Much as we all love working on the Premiership highlights, and much as those involved are looking forward to the challenge of getting the Cricket World Cup highlights on the air, there's nothing like live sport to get the adrenaline flowing.
From Middlesbrough to Rome and Murrayfield to Plymouth, BBC ONE was virtually a sports channel for the weekend. Three topsy-turvy Six Nations games and three full-blooded FA Cup ties, including an absolute classic. All fiercely competitive and too tight to call. And if you watched all six, congratulations, and hope you're still on speaking terms with anyone who shares your remote control!
Like most football fans who grew up in the 1970s, I have a huge sentimental attachment to the FA Cup. Along with England v Scotland, the Cup Final was the only live game allowed on TV. The programme started at breakfast time, peaked with David Coleman barking "One-nil" in that fantastically definitive manner, and ended with the winners wiping celebratory milk from their sideburns and proclaiming themselves "over the moon". Ten years ago, along with a couple of colleagues, I had the great privilege of trawling the archive and interviewing significant cup finalists from Sir Stanley Matthews to Roger Osborne for a programme called "The Essential FA Cup Final".
In the intervening decade, the old trophy has had a few ups and downs. The Champions League became the priority for a new generation of fans, managers and chairmen. Clubs started to rest players for FA Cup ties, and the nadir probably came in 2000 when the holders Manchester United were persuaded by the powers-that-be to withdraw from the Cup to take part in Fifa's Club World Championship in Brazil. Wembley had also ceased to be special both in terms of its antiquated infrastructure, and the number of club games played there. Professionally, my enthusiasm was also slightly dampened when the BBC lost the contract from 1997-2001!
However, things seem to have turned around for the better. Following some great games en route (Luton 3 Liverpool 5, Leicester 3 Tottenham 2 and an outstanding Liverpool v Chelsea semi-final), last year's final was one of the best of all time. And though the new Wembley promises to be something special, Cardiff has proved to be a superb venue.
Viewing figures throughout the rounds are excellent once again, as Roger Mosey has pointed out. The big clubs are taking the Cup seriously again, and the chasing pack have worked out that if West Ham can be seconds away from winning the trophy, then Spurs or Blackburn or Boro could just win it. As Gareth Southgate said last week: "We don't have to be a better club or team than (Manchester) United, we just have to beat them over 90 minutes."
Exciting though the Premiership race has been this season, it was clear who the top two would be in about September, if not the order in which they'd finish. The Cup is just not like that. Blackburn and Watford are now 90 minutes from Wembley, while the "big two" were both very close to going out over the weekend. Chelsea, in particular, really did escape by the skin of their teeth. Each picked the best side they could, shuffled their respective pack throughout, and now face a distinctly uncomfortable replay next Monday.
It's always a story when either slips up in the Premiership, but the real prospect of one, or both, coming a cropper in a knockout tournament added extra spice to a great pair of quarter-finals, and clearly appealed to the viewing public. And in our third live game, Championship side Plymouth had a hard luck story of their own as Ben Foster and Watford fought a desperate rearguard action to get through. And, quite rightly, there was a sell-out crowd at all three ties, despite the kick-off times and live TV coverage.
It's now been confirmed that we'll be showing the Spurs v Chelsea replay live next Monday, and if it's half as good as the first game, we're all in for a treat. But spare a thought for Steve McClaren: most of his squad is likely to face a fierce 90, or even 120 minutes, just five days before that massive Euro 2008 qualifier in Israel. He could have done without any replays!
The semi-final line-up is complicated, both because of the either/or element and factors such as Spurs' likely involvement in the Uefa Cup the previous Thursday. But whichever game we show live promises to be as hard-fought and dramatic as those we saw at the weekend. Then, we hope to be broadcasting the final live from the new Wembley in mid-May - 135 years on, the FA Cup is alive, well and positively thriving!
