Scorn of ‘Big Two’ signals the FA Cup’s sad demise
Feb 14 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal
As North East football ponders what to do with its free weekend, Mark Douglas asks whether Newcastle and Sunderland are contributing to the demise of a once great competition.
BEING presented with a free Valentine’s weekend might have staved off internal unrest in the homes of football supporters all over the North East, but it doesn’t do much for the fading romance of the world’s most famous knockout competition.
In what has become a depressingly familiar routine, months before the clocks go forward and with the region still in the grip of an arctic mid-winter, Tyne-Wear interest in the FA Cup is over.
The depressing fresh development for the 2008/9 season is that both Newcastle United and Sunderland wouldn’t have had it any other way.
After all, there is nothing new about the failure of either club to make inroads on the road to Wembley – both clubs were out at the same stage last year. But what is unique is the thinly-veiled contempt which both clubs have shown for the competition.
Fighting a battle for credibility against more lucrative trophies like the Champions League, the Cup desperately needs clubs of their stature to take it seriously – but that call went unheeded by Joe Kinnear and Ricky Sbragia.
With relegation battles to fight, both clubs viewed the competition as an unwanted distraction – sapping energy and attention from the business of preserving their place in the financially lucrative elite.
But now they have been granted their wish of a free Saturday to rest and recuperate, can they really say they have benefited all that much? United’s managing director Derek Llambias said this week that he believes the club will be competing for every trophy going within five years, but the evidence doesn’t support that bold assertion.
This season they couldn’t even trust themselves to fight a battle on two fronts – ducking out of the Cup to barely concealed sighs of relief at St James’s Park.
The extra week has given Obafemi Martins, Mark Viduka and Alan Smith time to hone their fitness without the pressure of a game to prepare for. But exiting the competition to a barely interested Hull City hammered another dent in the prestige of a club that sit third in the list of appearances in Cup finals.
