EXPULSION FROM THE CUP

While I was purring at the John Smith's yesterday, the FA Cup was in full swing-the Third Qualifying Round. My last cup tie was Harrogate Town v Penistone Church, but you know that already because I would have written about it...remember the Sulphurites?

Harrogate drew Bradford Park Avenue in the next round which they drew 0-0 yesterday. Bit boring.
I was going to Buxton v Alvechurch 2-1 until I got my Hudd v Tott ticket. Quality.

OR maybe I should have headed to Stockport County v FC United of Manchester 3-3!

So now I am going to tell about some FA Cup disqualifications, a history source that I have nicked for the wonderful website www.FACupFactfile. Worth a search if you are that type of anorak.

In the 136 years of the FA Cup, 136 clubs have been expelled from the competition for: i) refusing to play extra time, ii) playing ineligible players, iii) paying players OR  iv) not having appropriate ground standards.

Glebe FC from Kent suffered under the poor ground standards rule in 2015-6. They didn't have all the ground trimmings as specified by the FA, out they went.

In 1873-4 the Sheffield FC team played Shropshire Wanderers over two drawn First Round matches (0-0 both times) and they were asked to toss a coin to decide the result. Sheffield won.
in 1879-80, Sheffield FC refused to play extra-time after drawing with Nottingham Forest, so Forest went through. Wouldn't a coin have helped?

In the early Cup years, clubs withdrew from the competition when they could not travel. Queen's Park in Scotland had to do this in 1872-3 in the semi-final allowing Oxford University a walkover.

Bradford City in December 2012 became the most recent club to be expelled from the cup, but only for a short time. They fielded an unregistered loanee, Curtis Good, in a second round tie 1-1 draw v Brentford. They were expelled because the paper work had not be completed but appealed and were reinstated, but had to pay a £1000 fine. Brentford won the "replay" 4-2.

In 2016-17, Shawbury United from Shropshire were losing to Coventry United 0-1 in an Extra Preliminary Round, when after a longish delay to the match due to an injury, somebody switched off the floodlights and the tie was abandoned with 8 minutes to go. Coventry went through.

Bury fielded an ineligible player against Chester City in 2006-7, so suffered and there are plenty of these incidents in the early years of the cup but not many recently.  AND there were many counts of paying players before the game accepted professionalism in the 1880s.
Preston North End, Accrington Stanley and Blackburn Park Road are some of those clubs with money in the boot issues. Note these all come from Lancashire where professionalism had its early roots, particularly with the canny Scots coming over the border to earn a penny. I blame the cotton mill owners!