The magic of the FA Cup first round

Walsall blogger Mark Jones will enjoy the magic of the FA Cup first round this weekend - as long as little Stourbridge don't pull off a major upset.

I enjoyed last Saturday morning's trip to the Banks's Stadium as much as I enjoyed last Saturday afternoon's second-half comeback at Wycombe.

OK, when I got to the ground at nine o'clock thinking I might be looking a right prat on my own and realised that there were about 250 people in front of me, at that point I wasn't enjoying it. But on receiving my extremely forgetable thin strip of blue card that passes for a Stourbridge cup ticket, I was happy.

The well-worn cliche about the magic of the cup is still spot on. FA Cup first round day always seems to bring out a few more of the old die-hards, especially when we're away from home, so it was good to see some familiar faces in the queue. Hopefully they all got their tickets.

Fair play to those who were there at 5 o'clock in the morning, proving that - whatever certain individuals throw at us - there are still plenty of people who love and care about the club, and are prepared to go the extra mile to show their level of commitment. It would be nice to think that that's actually appreciated in some quarters.

From the Banks's at 10am to Adams Park at 3:45pm the good atmosphere disappeared, with an awful first half display against the no-wins-in-nine bottom club.

More than a few harsh words from our manager Chris Hutchings and his assistant Martin O'Connor in the dressing room coupled with a smart tactical switch clearly did the trick, like in the Exeter game a fortnight earlier, when we actually started to play to our potential and were able to come away with 3 points.

Which kind of neatly sums up the season, when we click we can get results, but we rarely do it for the whole 90 minutes let alone over the course of a six, seven, eight game run. Whether or not we're actually good enough to play well over a sustained period of time is another issue.

This brings me on to the huge inflatable sized banana skin that is Saturday's trip to Stourbridge's splendidly named War Memorial Ground - on the weekend of Remembrance Sunday as well.

On paper it should be easy - approach the game in the correct manner, pick the right team and play to our full potential and we'll be fine. BUT we all know that nothing in football ever goes like that, least of all where Walsall are concerned.

The story goes that former manager Paul Merson has admitted that he watched Slough before our first round FA Cup tie there in 2004 and was so unimpressed by them that he went back and told the players there was no way they could lose.

In one respect he was right, Slough weren't much good but we were much much worse on the day and got exactly what we deserved, a 2-1 defeat. Obviously what Merse forgot was that non-league teams can raise their game considerably on big occasions and you still have to turn up and perform.

To be fair we did avoid a repeat 12 months later in another scary tie at Merthyr.

Hopefully Chris Hutchings won't make the same mistakes on Saturday. Gary Hackett's boys deserve our fullest respect and if we put in an approach that's anything less than 100% professional, then we'll be in big trouble.

But Hutch should know all this - his last act at Derby was to guide them through a tricky tie at Forest Green, while Martin O'Connor has managed at Stour's level for the Glassboys' fierce rivals Halesowen.

Both Manny Smith and Troy Deeney have also served their time on loan at Halesowen too, while the fact that Alex Nicholls and Mark Bradley are both pretty much Stourbridge lads should help rid the squad of any complacency.

For me it's the older players who hold the key for us on Saturday, they are the ones who need to show their experience and know how, especially if things go wrong.

At Slough, when we needed it most - with Merson looking like he was ready to check himself back into rehab for the whole 90 minutes - Jorge Leitao, Zigor Aranalde and the disgraceful Simon Osborn all went missing and we paid the price as a result.

Primed and ready come 1 o'clock on Saturday. To be fair, all of the players interviewed have made the right noises this week.

The tricky part is putting it into practice - don't you dare let us down boys.