SPAOTP's Road to Wembley: FA Cup 1st Qualifying Round

Today, Some People Are On The Pitch enters relatively new territory. We don't often cover non-league football, but we're always keen to cover as many angles of the game as possible, so join us now as we embark on a journey that will educate and enthral. This is where we start our Road to Wembley 2007/08.

Following the message we received recently from Sniffer 72, we were inspired to track the progress of a team from the early stages of this season's FA Cup competition right the way through to the Final. So today the journey begins in the First Qualifying Round and we've selected a team at random who we'll follow until they get beaten. Once that happens, we'll follow the winners until they get beaten, and so on.

Anyway, the team we've chosen to begin our quest are Burnham Ramblers and today they travelled to Chelmsford City for what amounted to an Essex derby. Before we give you the result, here's some information about SPAOTP's newest favourite team.

Formed in 1900, Burnham Ramblers spent much of their history playing at intermediate level before gaining senior status in 1985. They can currently be found in the Essex Senior League where their new manager is Derek Robinson. After many of the players moved onto pastures new during the summer, Robinson had to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, metaphorically speaking, and the proof of how difficult his task has been is reflected in the Ramblers' recent results. They've won just one of their first four matches of the season, and at present they lie thirteenth out of seventeen teams.

Still, the league is one thing - the Cup, on the other hand, is another, and if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that the form book counts for very little at times like this. The question is, could Derek Robinson motivate his team to overcome the might of Chelmsford City?

It wouldn't be easy, especially given the fact that Chelmsford play two levels above Burnham in the Ryman League Premier Division. As it turned out, that gap proved to be far too big for Burnham to overcome and the final result saw the home side win 5-0. A great shame for our first team in the Road to Wembley, but it was always going to be tough beating Chelmsford who are currently second in the Ryman Premier.

So there it is. We must now say goodbye to Burnham and adopt their victors, Chelmsford City, for the Second Qualifying Round. Who will they play and will they get through to the round after that? Stay tuned to find out…

SPAOTP Recommends... Kickster / The Road To Wembley

One of the nice things about running a blog site is that you get to correspond with lots of great people. Some of them want to exchange links with their own site while others are merely responding to articles you've written. It's what makes SPAOTP such an enjoyable site to maintain from our point of view, and we thank you all for your part in that.

During the last few days, we've had two such correspondences which we thought we'd share with you. First of all, I received a message from Carrie Dunn on Friday about her new blogsite called Kickster. What makes this an interesting site is that Carrie, along with some of her pals from The Times and The Guardian will be writing about women's football, an area which is highly overlooked in blog terms.

You can therefore expect Kickster to feature some proper, decent journalistic writing (something we can't claim to boast ourselves) and it's a resource which should be highly valuable in the days to come as the Women's World Cup 2007 got underway about half an hour ago in China.

We therefore urge you to check out www.kickster.tv and show your support for women's football. I'm sure they'll do a grand job of reporting everything you need to know so we wish them all the best with their venture.

Secondly, we heard just last night from a chap with the Blogger ID of 'Sniffer 72'. He told us about a very interesting personal quest he's currently embarking on. Starting with the Extra Preliminary Round of the FA Cup which took place recently, Sniffer72 aims to follow one team's path through to the Final at Wembley, visiting as many matches along the way as money and available tickets will allow.

When a team gets beaten, he'll go and see the victors when they play in the next round and so on. Sniffer72 began his 'Road to Wembley' by watching the match between Chertsey and Wick on August 18th which ended in a 2-2 draw. The replay was won three days later by Chertsey, 3-0, so off he went to see the Preliminary Round game between Chertsey and Sittingbourne on September 1st. Sittingbourne won 1-0 so this Saturday you'll find him watching their away game at Dartford.

Cool, huh? We certainly hope Sniffer72 gets all the way to Wembley via some fine matches and venues, and if you want to see how he's getting on, visit his Road to Wembley blogsite.

Meantime, we thought we'd adopt a far more pedestrian approach to the same idea by following a Road To Wembley of our own. Somewhat belatedly, we're starting off with this Saturday's First Round Qualifying and having chosen a team completely at random, we can officially announce we'll be following Burnham Ramblers as they travel to Chelmsford City.

Hurrah!

Who knows - maybe our Road To Wembley will cross paths with Sniffer72's?!? I suppose inevitably it will at some point. Should have thought that one through before typing it out, really…

More details at the weekend about Burnham Ramblers, but for the time being our thanks go to Sniffer72 and Carrie for their respective emails, and don't forget - if there's something you want to tell us about, please feel free to do so. The address is info [at] spaotp [dot] com.