Magic of the FA Cup has resisted tinkering and is only getting stronger
Macclesfield’s historic defeat of Crystal Palace warmed even this Eagles fan’s heart and shows the FA Cup retains its powerful magic, writes Ed Warner.
The first WhatsApp arrived seconds after the final whistle. “Will this get a mention in the next edition of your column?!!!” Of course it does.
After Macclesfield went ahead against Crystal Palace on Saturday, I’m not embarrassed to say that I struggled to want an equaliser from my team. Not that on any reading of the game did they deserve one anyway. Rightly, there’s nowhere for the Eagles, or us fans, to hide right now.
I’ve written here before that JL Carr’s How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup is one of my favourite sports books. That’s just fiction.
Impossible, then, for me not to be uplifted by the reality of what is now being hailed as the greatest ever FA Cup upset, certainly as measured by the size of the gap between Macclesfield and Palace in the league pyramid.
Ironically, only the day before the game I had spent a heart-warming hour at a pop-up exhibition in the recently-restored Victorian subway at Crystal Palace Park, once itself host to FA Cup finals.
The Art of Waiting celebrated the Eagles’ first ever trophy win in last year’s Wembley final through the eyes of the club’s long-suffering followers. Like everyone else there, I handed my phone to a stranger to have my photo taken alongside the trophy itself, which eight months on had only just had “2025 Crystal Palace” engraved on its plinth. Now, we’re back to the art of waiting.
It’s a stretch to believe that “2026 Macclesfield” will be added to the trophy’s engravings, but the Silkmen’s triumph at the weekend will rightly be forever etched in the competition’s collective memory.
“The magic of the cup” may be a cliche, but it is a cliche for very good reasons. However much the FA misguidedly tinkers with its format and scheduling, this is a heritage sporting asset that grows stronger by the year.
Too much money chasing too few goods
If GB swimmer Ben Proud, a silver medalist at the Paris 2024 Olympics and last summer’s World Championships, thought he would be in elite company in signing up for the Enhanced Games, he must be increasingly disappointed.
Reece Prescod, Britain’s fifth fastest sprinter ever, is hardly a household name. He retired last year and, while talking a convincing game about getting in shape for a life-changing payday, seems unlikely to test “clean” record times with only brief preparation for the inaugural Games in Las Vegas in May – whatever regime of performance-enhancing drugs Enhanced’s scientists devise for him.
Late last year, Enhanced announced it would list on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange via a reversal into a shell company, or SPAC, that would give it access to $200m cash and a putative enterprise value of $1.2bn.
This is fantastical valuation stuff, especially if Reece Prescod is one of the very few athletes publicly signed up to the Games with just 18 weeks to go.
To put him into context, Prescod is equal 88th on the global all-time list for the 100m, having run a best of 9.93 seconds back in May 2022. He will, though, be competing against American Fred Kerley, seventh on that all-time list with a best of 9.76, also set almost four years ago.
The SPAC cash should at least ensure athletes get paid (unlike those who ran in Michael Johnson’s financially disastrous Grand Slam Track venture last year), but unless that money lures in more big names then shares in Enhanced may set unwanted records of their own when the company’s deal completes in the coming months.
“I’m capable of running sub-10 without any enhancements. I’m actually excited to see, with the full support, whether I can turn that 9.9 into a 9.8.”
Reece Prescod in The Times
Perhaps there are a few megastar competitors yet to be announced for Las Vegas, but surely that would have happened by now. Maybe, though, Enhanced hopes to demonstrate just how second-tier athletes can tear up the record books given a chemical boost – something we’ve always known, or at least suspected.
Maybe fielding lesser names is all part of a cunning plan. If so, my stock price prediction may be 180 degrees out. Takes two to make a market.
Puffas piece
My spoof application for the vacant Manchester United head coach role in last week’s column garnered record day one reads for my newsletter, Sport Inc.
This backs up what I was once told by one sports journalist – that even the most trivial news items on this particular club generate numbers of eyeballs worldwide that get ad sales teams at national newspapers salivating.
My imagined letter to Sir Jim Ratcliffe also prompted a small flurry of unsubscriptions, which I guess is the reverse of the same coin. Not every Malaysian or Venezuelan taxi driver of a certain age is a United fan.
As well as the various clicks, it elicited a reply, as imagined by reader and friend in the world of sport, John Brewer. Seems I might need to shine my best shoes, or at least put my favourite touchline trainers into the washing machine. Brewer wrote:
Dear Mr Fall Guy,
Thank you for your offer to manage my team. I agree that you could be exactly what we are after, and I think we have plenty of Puffa jackets that would suit you – but only in medium. As you say, it’s important for us to know that you are going to be a good fit, so we’d need to know your size before we can take your application further. You’d also need to agree to work closely with our highly trained team of nutrigeneticists to ensure that your weight and size remain constant during your employment, as we can’t afford to buy any more.
My Director of Performance Speak, Micro Gains and Soundbites, Sir Dave (who you may well know), has asked me to seek your views on the following before we decide on your suitability:
1. If our players wear hi-vis laces, do you think this will increase the chances of our players managing to pass the ball to a teammate?
2. Similarly, if they whiten their teeth even more than they currently do, and smile broadly in the opposition’s penalty area, do you think it will increase the chances of our crosses resulting in headers rather than going out for a goal kick?
We’d really value your views and answers, and if we like what you are saying, who knows where the journey could end?
Perhaps you could let us have some dates when you are available for interview – not just now, but at 18-month intervals over the next few years, so that if you don’t succeed first time around, we can give you a call on the next occasion(s) that the job comes up.
Yours in anticipation,
Sir Jimbo
Puff piece
Last year ended with my first time on a padel court, making me an even later adopter than I was for pickleball (force me to choose, padel wins).
This year started with a booze-fuelled first game of Billard Nicolas, or puff billiards. Hardly a sport, but in a week in which golf’s status as a source of exercise has been called into question, I may have burned as many calories per minute on the puff board as in a round of golf using a buggy.
Not sure I’ll shell out £639.90 for a deluxe mahogany version of the game, but a second-hand one from eBay might yet prove tempting.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com