Thetownend.com

Its that time of year coming up again.

The final qualifying round of the FA cup takes place on 14th October with the 1st round proper draw on Monday 16th October.

1st round games to be played on the weekend of 4th November 2023.

Some interesting non league teams left.

FULL DRAW – NORTHERN SECTION
Scarborough v Oxford City
Altrincham v Oldham Athletic
Halifax v Marine
Worksop Town v Boston
AFC Fylde v Leek Town
Hereford v Rochdale
York City v Needham Market
Solihull Moors v Biggleswade Town
Chesterfield v Kettering Town
Alfreton Town v Macclesfield
Hartlepool United v Chester
Bromsgrove/Chelmsford City v Whitby Town
Curzon Ashton v Tamworth
Kidderminster Harriers v Ashton United
Stourbridge v Gateshead

SOUTHERN SECTION
Aldershot Town v Lewes
Torquay United v Maidstone United
AFC Totton v Ramsgate
Aveley v Barnet
Hemel Hempstead v Woking
Horsham v Dorking Wanderers
Eastleigh v Dover Athletic
Yeovil v Southend United
Bromley v Wealdstone
Weston Super Mare v Maidenhead United
Braintree Town v Chesham United
Bracknell Town v Dagenham and Redbridge
Worthing v Bath City
Boreham Wood v Gosport/Welling
Cray Valley v Enfield Town
Ebbsfleet United v Slough
Billericay Town v Sheppey United

A few local(ish) sides left plus those teams in L1 that come into play as well as L2.
Oxford City, Aldershot, Yeovil, Weston, Maidenhead, Bracknell, Bath, Slough, Hereford.

Add to that Rovers, Oxford, Reading and Cheltenham.

Of course we all want Oxford but there are some good prospects in the hat.

I dont think there are any rank outsiders left lower than rank 7 to 8 this year.

Any of those Kent teams away would be good!

Cheltenham Nil home or away please.

You just know they would break their goalscoring duck against us in a 1-0 win don't you!

Exactly

Is the first round a free for all or is it still regionalised?

As for drawing Oxford. No thanks.

Yeah, fair enough.
Weston Super Mare away it is then.

Free draw.

Only the league cup has been regionalised I think. FA Cup hasn't ever been from the proper rounds.

A southern local non-league side away would be my preference, but knowing how cup draws tend to go, we'll probably end up with a disappointing northern away day to a league club

Probably get Whitby away, or Gateshead.

Selfishly, I'd love a tie away to Altrincham, Macclesfield, or Chester

Selfishly Solihull or Biggleswade away or Chesterfield or Kettering away would be good. Bromsgrove handy if they were to get through their 2 ties. Tamworth, Stourbridge or Kidderminster also doable.

As the DNA is in Pompey studying anyone away in that area would do, except Pompey themselves.

Aldershot, Bath or Weston away, Piss stains would be good but we would only get 1500/1600 tickets at their place yet we would give them 2500+ and not worth all hassle outside the stadiums

Oxford at home please.

Oxford home would probably be live on the box😁

No chance if Wrectum have some non league  team.

Non League Club home.

Hopefully they will get Barrow away

Portsmouth A

Yeovil, Exeter or Torquay away for me for locality, if Torquay and Yeovil get through of course. Otherwise the lowest ranked non league side at home.

Reading away pls

A low ranked non league at home would be best - financially we need the money from getting to round 3 and drawing a big club, so we need to get through rounds 1 and 2 with no drama.

Recently these kind of draws would give everyone nightmares. I wouldn't have the same kind of fear with Flynn at the helm.

Would be nice to get the Mighty Heed away, just for old times sake.

That would be the worst draw we could pretty much get I would say, a 500+ mile round trip against a team that would be a major banana skin even at home, no thanks!

If its non league then make it fairly local so more fans can back us there, not a trek to a Northern outpost please where we would only take about 300 fans!

Yeah, I might have only ben suggesting for sentiment and selfish reasons.   :D

300? Reading on here it would be more like 3,000!  ;D

Bath away would be a dream

 :dito:

Could do with TV :tvhappy: money for a first round tie against a low ranked non league side.

FA Cup 1st round this would do nicely. Cracking away day on a Saturday.

Until the FA move it to a Friday night or Sunday lunchtime:)

You’re probably right.

Draw 2.30 Sunday ITV. We’re ball 43.

Playing Reading again now sounds interesting!

Regardless of who they draw, guaranteed that Wrexham get one of the tv slots.

Pretty certain ESPN have the rights for the USA, so that is almost certain.

Yes please

😉😉

Cray Valley Paper Mills away could be a fun trip.
Guaranteed TV slot as well.

Bracknell

Expect the draw to follow after chatting with the Wrexham owner🤣

Will Kemp and Young be eligible to participate?

Good question, you would think not.

KKH and Yates definitely played in the FA Cup for us…

Temporary loan players must receive permission from their parent club.

Season long loan players are eligible to play for their loan club - no mention there of having to obtain permission from MK or Bradford

Unless of course we draw wither team!

They played in the Carabao cup game, that was start of the season though

Town play Aldershot home

A home tie at last. :)

To non league Aldershot. Rather happy with that.  ;D

Good games against them in the late 70’s & 80’s

Bit gutted to miss this one unless it's Friday or Monday. Hey ho

Was sitting next to a nice couple of chaps in hospitality, friends that do reciprocal visits to each others club. His was Aldershot, managed to find the shots cup score as he was leaving and earlier had a joke we'd be drawn in the cup If they got through.

I think he'll be genuinely delighted

No reason why that should not be televised. Local(ish) derby, non league v league.
But we all know it'll be Wrexham and Salford games

The Cian Harries derby.

He's 100% scoring.

He must have sorted his injury problems he’s already played 15 times this season.

For TV I reckon it'll be Charlton v Cray, Oxford v Maidenhead, Bromley v Barnsley and Mansfield v Wrexham

We may have been in with a chance if it was being played at Aldershot.

Tv companies rarely pick league sides at home to minnows.

I reckon it'll be Chesterfield v Pompey and Bromley v Blackpool. The Wrexham game might be on Welsh TV.

I stand corrected - Charlton v Cray has been picked for TV. Crewe v Derby is a kick in the nuts for other non-league sides as well I reckon.

Should win, shouldn't be on TV

Used to be quite naughty back in the day.

Seem to remember a certain referee, Lester Shapter being involved.  IIRC it was in the playoffs mid 80’s.

That wasn’t the leyland Daf/ Pizza Cup or whatever it was known as back in the day where we had Digby sent off and Bobby Barnes terrorised us.

That was the game where we were 2-0 up when Digby got sent off, and lost 3-2.

I remember us losing 2-1 there in the FA Cup on a Tuesday night, it was a bit interesting that night

I was also at the FA Cup game away at their place I think the crowd was something like 10,500

Also remember the Boxing Day being called off as we were driving along the M4 in the 85/86 season through a water logged pitch

Andy King was also playing for Aldershot that night.

I didn’t know that good memory😁

Only team that I will allow a drummer as there's(maybe military) is really fucking good!

This

Make tickets cheap for this and try and get a good attendance.

£10 maybe :D

£15
Under 16 £5
Concessions £10

Better than nothing I suppose but I know Bristol city only charged £10 last season for a 3rd round tie.

Have you been following during the Morfuni era…?!

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

£10 town end still with £15 on the sides should see a cracking gate.

Good shout and sounds a good deal.

What is a good gate in your opinion for this?

I would hope we can get 8k and the Shots will bring about 1,000 I would think.

I was at the last FA cup game between the sides in 1983 when we thrashed them 7-0 with Andy Rowland and the massively underrated winger Howard Pritchard both scoring hatticks that day with the minscule David Batty getting the other in front of 7,187 crowd.

That was a great game that day but no TV footage was taken at the time. IIRC Batty scored a 25 yarder and Prichard rounded the keeper for 2 of his goals.

It was a 3rd round tie and Aldershot were in the same division 4 as Town that year.

A couple of quotes from the Aldershot forum.


Some interesting comments there.

Be lucky if it's £25 on the sides

I'd expect tickets to be £18-£20 on the sides, £15 Town End. Crowd of around 7500 unless they make it surprisingly cheap or run some kind of promo.

Too expensive with Xmas around the corner.

Don't Aldershot have to agree if we want to sell the tickets below normal cost, not that I'd expect them to say no (although they obviously get a portion of gate receipts).

Both teams get a 45% share.

How utterly bizarre it was that we had a minutes silence against them for the death of PDCs mum

Didn't seem odd at the time but it really was

At those prices I think we could have an increase on what we've been getting in the league. A lot of people seem to shy away from the cup but a good price will encourage a good attendance not just from them but Aldershot will bring more as well.

Yeah it is, looking back.

A nice gesture but odd. The cult of Paolo ran far too deep at STFC under Wray, much to our later and current detriment!

TV games have been announced.

(https://i.postimg.cc/P5vHyz9j/394060556-342707971454598-4214691982505040466-n.jpg)

Crewe v Derby is a bit lame.

Must get the beer in for Crewe v Derby. Classic.

Zzzzzzzz

Is that loading for everyone else? maybe work blocked it  Ah well, here it is in text form:

Friday 3rd November 2023
19:45 Sheppey United v Walsall (ITV4ITVX)

Saturday 4th November 2023
17:45 Bromley v Blackpool (BBC Two)

Sunday 5th November 2023
12:15 Chesterfield v Portsmouth (ITV1)
14:45 Crewe Alexandra v Derby County (ITVX)
17:30 Charlton Athletic v Cray Valley Paper Mills (BBC2)

Crewe vs Derby? Are they taking the piss?

Just fold ITV at this point. Give everything the BBC don't have to Channel 4, they've shown with England they can do better than ITV although its a low bar.

Yeah, the C4 coverage wasn’t half bad.

The other ties are fine, under dog vs league club, but Crewe v Derby? WTF is that all about? dull tie that to anyone outside of Crewe and Derby anyway.

No Mansfield v Wrexham :D

It’s amazing that they haven’t chosen Wrexham or Salford

There’s always the replay or 2nd round😁

TBH Mansfield v Wrexham and Posh v Salford are pretty dull ties. If either had drawn a non league club it would have been on I am sure.

Oh for an away day in London in Round 3. Arse would be nice.

That sounds perfect :pint:

Arse, Spuds or Wet Spam :)

My mind’s not what it was, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to Chelsea.

Fulham & Brentford wouldn’t be too bad.

Personally wouldn’t fancy Brentford. I still think of us being on a equal footing!

I remember playing them in the old division 3 when they used to get 6500 crowds.

Maybe in the old div 2 I dont think Chelsea ever played lower than the 2nd tier.

And TBH for any league/Major cup game there has never been a crowd of under about 11k for games between us at either venue home or away.

Sorry JJ I was talking about Brentford after Aud’s comment.

One of my favs

That was a great game, in my head it was Boxing Day but obviously it wasnt! Windy Miller was unplayable that day.

Exactly what I thought! We’ve played them at home a couple of times on Boxing Day.

We had thousands there that night the season we fucked it up at the end!

Newcastle away 3rd round for me.

Had some cracking games against Brentford back in those days.
The FACup game against them we got herded back into the Brentford fans on route back to the station.
The bricks and bottles from the bus station wasn’t a decent experience, it was brutal.

The replay when we beat them at Griffin Park was superb.

Have they announced the ticket price’s yet v Aldershot

have they announced the date time yet. expect it won't be too long

I’ve not heard that either batch which seems odd considering the TV games have been selected and it’s less than two weeks away.

no rush, tomorrow will do.

expect it'll be 3pm on the Saturday

If we draw a good chance the replay would be in the box :D

Confirmed Saturday 4th 3.00pm

Wasn't it ever thus? Or do you get a choice if it's not televised?

Bit like Elvis?

I think the date can be agreed if its between both sets of clubs, if say it clashes with another local fixture on the same day/on police advice etc... you can change to Friday or Sunday even now I am sure I heard.

He never wanted to go there did he?

No, that's why he never went!🙂

RobertT might be able to confirm but dont ESPN show all first round games on their streaming service?
I think they used to anyway

From last year I didn't think they did.

The answer is NO.  ESPN do have the rights to the FA Cuo, and they do show more than UK TV, but it's only one or two more from the Saturday 3pm games.

Are we thinking no streaming ifollow type option?

Sent from my XQ-AD51

No, iFollow does not own any rights for FA Cup games.

Looks like £15 tickets for Aldershot. Good pricing I reckon.

Agreed. Will go if that is true. Hopefully a good gate and encourages them to bring a few more too. Stratton Bank maybe even needed?

Now on sale!

Stupid question time. Presume ST holders have to pay. Are the seats reserved for existing STs.

Season ticket holders definitely have to pay and don’t think your seats are reserved but stand to be corrected.

Your ST seats are reserved. When you log on, you'll see a link to "reserved seats" in your account panel.I just bought mine and it's now sittingon my phone.

Thanks!

What are the prices?

£15 adult

Cheers

£15 all stands?

Barnsley expelled from the competition for fielding an ineligible player.

Horsham go through instead

Oh thats quite rare these days, certainly post round 1 proper.

How have they even managed that? Why was he ineligible?

They played a player in the replay who was not signed prior to the original match.

Sort of thing we’d do

Dizzy heights of Sutton away awaits.

Thats almost a derby for Horsham