'Will play...'

Two parter today that is going to be split into 'BG' and 'AG' (Before and After Gillingham - with a soft 'G', like a 'J') with the distinct possibility that the AG section may contain delirious ranting.

Half the excitement of the FA Cup is not knowing who you're going to playing next. This concept seems to be obligatory in the Bowl Championship series in College Football because there have been some very interesting results from the USA overnight: USC lost to UCLA, throwing the entire BCS series into absolute confusion (especially as Notre Dame beat UCLA). For what it's worth, here's a very quick overview using my take on how things should shake out:

Florida v Ohio State in the Championship game...because the best blogs about college football are Tressel's World and Every Day Should Be Saturday. I've got a spreadsheet I knocked up a couple of weeks ago that does some headline analysis of schedule strength, but I can't find it now - it did seem to suggest that USC/UCLA and Florida/Arkansas would be crucial to finding out who Ohio State would be playing - and it's turned out that way, as Florida won the SEC.

Of course, the next week is going to give the opportunity to the world and his wife to have an opinion about who should be in the title game. To some extent it doesn't matter, because as long as the game itself is as good as last year's was I don't care who wins as long as it's not Ohio State.


When it's all over this year, this one will be worth watching again - great fun.

Oh and Wake Forest won the ACC. Jim Grobe seems to be a consensus Coach of The Year; I can't imagine that this real life Cinderella story won't be registering some degree of interest in Tuscaloosa when the folks down there read their papers this morning.

Thus endeth the 'BG' section today. I have a 1:00pm Kick Off to attend.

I hope we win today. Third Round, Third Round, Third Round...

After AG begins here...

One of the best things about having friends that are football fans is that sometimes the following scenario happens: after having avoided each other's teams for the best part of thirty years, fate brings you together.

This afternoon, having watched City storm into a three goal half time lead courtesy of a Phil Jevons hat-trick, I spent the last ten minutes worrying that Gillingham were going to snatch an equaliser to make it 4-4 and possibly steal what modest FA Cup dreams I have away from me. We won (but the Gillingham goals were sloppy) and after a trip to the newsagents I got home in time to watch the draw for the Third Round.

'...will play Coventry City...'

As soon as the initial...well, shock and bewilderment actually...had subsided (about a nanosecond) I immediately shouted 'Dave!' and tried to find his phone number. For you see, Dave is a Coventry fan; when I rang him he said he knew it was me and that it was about time our teams played each other. I'll attempt to find out when this was, but I suspect the 1979/80 season when Bristol City were still in Division 1.

There are a number of angles to this game already and as it's more than a month to go I'll be attempting to give some detail about them later: but two things are significant. With the assistance of the mustachioed chin wagger above, both clubs were able to escape relegation at the end of 1976/77 season. More recently, Louis Carey had a season so unremarkable at Cov that they sold him back to us.

Well, we got a home tie (thanks Ricky Hatton) against a team that's in a higher division than us (thanks Amir Khan) so I can't complain. It could have been worse...Liverpool v Arsenal...LOL.

He wouldn't have got us a home draw with the gloves on.