On The Ball with Mark Wheat: The Romance of the FA Cup
by Mark Wheat
January 27, 2014
On the Ball with Mark Wheat is a new Monday feature on The Current that celebrates the connections between music and soccer, with an eye to the past weekend's results. Listen Mondays at 7 p.m. as Mark plays the music selection of the week.
In Sunday's NY Times Sam Borden who has done a lot to spread the love of the game over here, tried to explain the romance of the FA Cup.
This weekend's games actually didn't bring any great moments of drama, except perhaps for Fulham fans, as you can read at the end of this post. But there was more glorious proof of last week's topic, the cliche, "It's a game of two halves": Watford, Elton John's favorite, who are in the second tier, Championship division, went to Manchester City, who very rarely give up goals at home to Premier League teams. Watford were leading 2-0 at half time ... but they lost 4-2!!
The most excitement came at the end of the weekend, when the draw for the next FA Cup round paired up almost all the remaining Premier league sides including two huge clashes: Man City vs. Chelsea and Arsenal vs. Liverpool! Strangely enough, one of the teams mentioned in Sam's article, Brighton, have been drawn at home against the Hull Tigers, who are the only BPL team to play a lower-division opponent, giving both teams a taste of that unique FA Cup romance.
Speaking of romance (see video at bottom of page)...Jake Bugg did a special UBS Forum session when he was in town recently. He last visited us in August last year, when Barb Abney asked him what he did BEFORE he got his first guitar at the age of 12 (he's only 19 now!) and he said he just played football like every other kid on his council estate (an English version of 'the projects'). So I decided to start the conversation on what I hoped would be familiar territory:
Listen to Mark Wheat talk to Jake Bugg about Notts County F.C. (transcript below)
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Mark Wheat: You said before you played guitar, all you cared about was soccer. Are you still into it?
Jake Bugg: Yeah, I am, yeah. I'm not too happy with my team's performances this season, though ...
MW: What team do you support?
JB: Notts County. They're the oldest team in the world.
MW: Oh, really!
JB: Well, the oldest professional team.
MW: Tell us the story, and give us some background about the two teams in Nottingham.
JB: Well, there's Nottingham Forest, who I'm not a great big fan of. But moving on to my team, we're the oldest professional team — about 151 years old, I think. We gave Juventus their first football kit, and then so three seasons ago, Juventus paid for everything for us to fly over and play at their brand-new stadium, and we drew 1 1!
MW: Really!
JB: Yeah, and then we lost to some terrible team 3-0 the next week. So that's football for you — "soccer", sorry.
MW: You can call it "football" here — I mean, we have a Shrewsbury fan in the house!
JB: A Shrewsbury fan?!
MW: And a Chelsea fan.
JB: Yeah, well, ignore him, then. (laugh)
MW: Why did you choose Notts County instead of Forest? Was is it a familiar thing, is it one or the other?
JB: Well, my granddad supported Notts County. When I used to play football all the time, I didn't really have a team. You always like the big Premiership teams and stuff when you're younger, like Chelsea or whatever.
When I lost interest in it and started playing guitar, I thought I should probably support my local team, and [Notts County] were there before Forest.
MW: Now that you're famous, have Notts County invited you over to play a gig for them?
JB: No, but they said I can go and train with them any time I like!
MW: Nice!
JB: I have to get my fitness back up, though; I don't want to turn up when it's the fitness routine — that would be horrible!
MW: What position did you used to play?
JB: I used to play center forward.
MW: You're a little small for a center forward, but center forwards are small these days —
JB: I'm a little small for a center-back, not a center forward!
I could feel his competitive streak coming out there, so I thought we should start talking music! You can hear that portion of the interview on the radio Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m.; it'll be archived on the website right afterwards.
Big shout-out to Tom who was wearing the Shrewsbury shirt in the audience. That's a team that is even more obscure than Notts County! And to Kyle from Coon Rapids who had his Chelsea shirt on and said they just happened to win the first game he ever saw; everyone has their reason!
Because they play in the third level of the Football League (now called League One, just to avoid confusion), Notts County played in the First Round of the FA Cup earlier in the season and lost to Hartlepool. But that's probably a good thing as they are struggling to stay up. They were bottom of the table in early November when they replaced their manager, naming as 'player/manager' Shaun Derry, a local lad who has played for both County and their arch-rivals Forest. He's worked some magic and they're now five points clear of the bottom and out of the dreaded relegation zone.
Just to prove Jake's point about football being a weird game, Notts County beat Sheffield United recently, and on Sunday, Fox Sports showed United almost upsetting Fulham from the Premiership in the FA Cup, only being pulled back to 1-1 after going down to 10 men.