Trivia matters

Did you know that turtles can breath through their bottoms? Or that there are more mobile phones in the UK than people? Apparently, there are no public toilets in Peru and four out of ten people that come to a party in your home will look in your bathroom cabinet? What's more, Captain Kirk never ever said "Beam me up Scotty". Not once.

We are a nation of trivia lovers. Completely useless facts that you can amaze your friends with - at work, down the pub, at the football. We like simple, quick, snappy morsels of information. Easily digestible, not too complicated. We can't concentrate for too long so short sentences and brief paragraphs are more likely to be read. This logic is applied in many national newspapers (most notably the tabloids) and on our TV screens; the success of programmes such as Eastenders and Coronation Street is founded on twenty second clips that don't tax our brains. We struggle to consume and process anything more complex or anything overly lengthy.

And trivia fits this bill perfectly. The word trivia comes from the Latin "trivium" which means "where three roads meet". People would gather at these intersections and discuss everyday and unimportant matters. There's another piece of trivia for you.

In the world of football, trivia is king. It fills the spaces between the games. We are bombarded with statistics, facts and figures that we can quite easily live without. But the point is, we love it. All the instantly forgettable information about players, teams, managers, competitions, games, fans, grounds. Access to the whole gambit of football trivia is made so much easier nowadays with the Internet. At the touch of a button I can tell you where Michael Owen was born (Chester), which football club is immortalised in the classic film Spinal Tap (Shrewsbury Town) and why the Aston Villa mascot Hercules the lion was sacked (for pawing Miss Aston Villa on the pitch at half time). When it comes to football, we bathe in an ocean of trivial matters.

Indeed, trivia matters.

And in the build up to this season's FA Cup Final the trivial facts play a part in the preparation. Six weeks separate the semi-finals and the final so we need to quench our thirst for useless information. How else do we while away the days waiting for the big game to come around?

Some examples. Cardiff City have been allocated the West end of Wembley for the final, the opposite end from the one they had in the semi. The winners of the FA Cup Final will receive £1 million from the FA. Portsmouth will play in their all blue kit whilst Cardiff City (who lost the toss) will play in their black away strip, as worn in their quarter-final and semi-final victories. This year's final referee will be Mike Dean (aged 39). And, probably most interestingly, Cardiff City and Portsmouth have never met before in the FA Cup. Both clubs have long histories in the competition; Cardiff eighty seven seasons and Portsmouth ninety eight. Cardiff's debut in the FA Cup came in 1911 with a defeat against Merthyr Tydfil whilst Portsmouth's sojourn into the competition was heralded with a 10-0 thrashing of Ryde in 1898.

So the game between Cardiff City and Portsmouth on May 17th will be their first ever FA Cup encounter. A bit of trivia I'll no doubt be boring my friends with over the next few weeks.

And another piece of trivia to end on? Every day is about 55 billionths of a second longer than the day before it. Nuts, that means it's longer than I thought to wait for the FA Cup Final.

Why?

I need to get this off my chest. It is something that annoys me this time every year. Each and every year it's the same. Please bear with me, this won't take long.

In an early post, I bemoaned the fact that, as the FA Cup progresses through the rounds, it will inevitably lose some of the "romance" as smaller clubs and the non-league outfits fall by the wayside. One of my comments (back in early November) was this:

"the BBC always chose to televise a dull all-Premier League tie in the Third Round"

And, low and behold, the BBC's choice for the first live game of the Third Round Proper is Aston Villa v Manchester United.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against either club. Both are playing good football this season, and it should be a most entertaining game. But why? Why, BBC, why?

The FA Cup has so much to offer. The real appeal, surely, is the prospect of a team punching above their weight. Villa v United just doesn't do that for me. It doesn't scream out "FA Cup" to me, not just yet anyway. It may do if it were a semi-final tie, but not at this stage of the competition.

The BBC will position themselves well to defend this selection. They will argue based on the amount of support there is for both clubs. But don't we already see enough of these teams on TV? Match of the Day (or Match of the Day 2) every week shows, as a minimum, their goals. If not, then highlights. Both feature heavily in Sky live games. And now also on Setanta. Not too mention ITV's coverage of United's Champions League games.

As a child, the FA Cup final on TV was the only live game that you could watch from the comfort of the living room. It was the occasion of the season, the highlight of the football calendar. It was the rarest of treats. FA Cup final day viewing would start around nine or ten o'clock on the Saturday morning; I would fight, with my brother and friends, for the best vantage point on the sofa, from a very early hour. And sit mesmerised in the same position, all day. For one simple reason; a live game on TV was a novelty. It didn't really matter who was playing.

Now, we are spoilt for choice. And I hate to say this, but for me the FA Cup final as a televisual spectacle has lost that attraction that it once held. It may still be a big fish, but it has been engulfed in a big pond with many other big fish to swim against.

How many times have Villa met United in the FA Cup? This will be the fourth time in seven seasons, all in the Third Round Proper. And it is not the first time the BBC have chosen the exact same tie to beam into our front rooms.

So go on BBC, be brave. There are so many interesting Third Round games that could be screened instead. Games that really do scream "FA Cup" at me. OK, BBC will also be screening Burnley v Arsenal and Stoke City v Newcastle United, which isn't too bad. But what is wrong with getting Havant & Waterlooville on the box instead? It would be great for the club. Or Bury at Norwich City? Colchester United v Peterborough United? Or (dare I say it) Cambridge United at Wolves? The later rounds will no doubt be packed with all Premiership ties, so why not wait until then?

This is why there is a commonly held view that the FA Cup has lost some of it's old sparkle and shine. If the BBC keep offering up live matches that involve clubs that the armchair fans are used to watching week in, week out, then those same fans become immune to them.

Lets have a bit of variety, and a bit of imagination.

Bring back the romance. Give the smaller clubs a little limelight. Isn't that what the FA Cup is all about? Or am I totally missing the point? I know the BBC will never change, and each season I will find myself asking the same question.

Why?

The story that never was

The Internet. What a marvellous thing, the "invention" of our time. The power of instant communication, information available at the click of a mouse, making a mockery of physical distance at the touch of a button.

My FA Cup journey owes much to the Internet; it has basically made my life so much easier. Finding information about the competition format, the dates of games (and replays), about tickets, ground locations, travel. It allows for immediate and rapid communication with the clubs and their fans. In fact everything connected with my road towards the final. All this has been done from the comfort of the spare room.

Not to mention this blog. In equal measure I have enjoyed going to the games, meeting new people and writing about it all. As I have alluded to a few times already, the response I have had to this blog, since my first post on 24th August, has shocked me. And it continues to do so, daily. As I write this post this evening, there have so far been 13,071 page views in 7,027 different visits to the blog. This is from 3,087 unique visitors in 53 different countries. For 200 visitors to vote on my latest frivolous poll is, on it's own, pretty good going.

Now, in Internet terms, not huge figures, but for something that started out as a stroll down the lane to watch Chertsey Town on a cool August summer evening, these stats never cease to surprise.

Of course, without the accessibility that the Internet creates, none of this would have been possible. The clubs along my journey have assisted with the access. Links on the home pages of the websites of Sittingboure, Dartford, Eastbourne Borough and (most recently) Cambridge United have helped. Add to that mention of the site in a number of match day programmes, non-league football publications and over match tannoys, and the fingers of the web are encouraged to spread further and wider and deeper.

But the Internet can also be a perilous place, especially when the information you find is of dubious quality or questionable caliber.

On the way into work today I was amazed to hear a radio newsreader declare that there had been "a mistake" with the FA Cup draw on Sunday. The draw for the Third Round Proper. The one that paired Cambridge United with Wolverhampton Wanderers. This "news" even made some of today's newspapers. You could probably understand my reaction. What on earth is going on? Would the draw have to be done again? Maybe I'm not off to Wolves after all? Probably Trevor Brooking's fault (again).

As it turned out, this was the story that never was. There was no mistake, no error, no blunder. A conspiracy theory of sorts, that had broken on the world wide web early on Tuesday and had spread like wildfire across the ether to make big news within a matter of hours. The "mistake" reported was that the number 25 ball had been drawn out of the bowl but the number 24 read aloud instead. If this indeed had happened, it would have meant that Manchester United should be playing Bristol City instead of Aston Villa.

But photographs and video stills of the draw proved that there had been no mistake. The number 24 ball had been pulled out and read out. End of.

But it just goes to show how powerful the Internet can be, something that the conspiracy theorists can use to great effect. And often do. Many things are written on the Internet that people believe and over time are perceived as fact or, at best, written into folklore. The 9/11 conspiracy theory is probably the most notable example. Of course, this is nothing new; the Internet alone is not to blame. Storytelling as a form of communication has been in existence since man could stand unaided on two legs, and stories have always been passed from generation to generation. The mere passing of time allows for the real facts to be diluted and the (usually more interesting or newsworthy) fiction to be elaborated. The difference with the Internet is that the time element is condensed - for thousands of years read days, for hundreds of years, read minutes. And the fact that we can view something "in print" on a screen fools us into thinking that what we are reading is true.

We can all be easily fooled. Personally, I blame the bloggers. Especially the idiots who blog about football...