16/08/08 - EPR: VT FC 0 Newport Pagnell Town 2

THROUGHOUT THE 2007/08 SEASON I went to every round of the FA Cup, starting with the Extra Preliminary Round tie between Haringey Borough and Wembley FC, and finishing with Portsmouth versus Cardiff. My adventures have been documented in my book The Road From Wembley.

And in August of 2008 when the competition started afresh I found myself compelled to get back on the road...

Another season and another record number of entries. Choosing just which one to visit was a lot more complicated than the first time around, when I had plumped for Wembley FC to make a snappy title for my book.

Should I go for one of the teams that I witnessed last year? Wembley, Haringey Borough, London APSA or Sporting Bengal?

Or should I look ahead into the already drawn Preliminary or First Qualifying Rounds to try and chart a course of my own design?

In the end my heart led my head, and as I was holidaying on the south coast, I decided to find the closest cup tie on the day to the cup's current home of Portsmouth's Fratton Park, in order to create a somewhat tenuous link with my previous season exploits.

After an hour or so of direction finding on Google Maps, I calculated that the 17.6 miles from Fratton Park to the home of Wessex Premier League team VT FC narrowly edged out the 20.5 miles to Cowes Sports. It also dispensed with the need for a ferry to the Isle of Wight, logistically appealling although romantically flawed.

So that meant Extra Preliminary Round number 170 between VT FC and Newport Pagnell Town was the order of the day.

I had debated the trip briefly with my long-suffering wife Vanessa on the preceding Friday night when I had told her my plans for the next day.

'You're not doing it again are you?' She asked, suspiciously.

'No, no of course not.'

'No I mean you're not doing it again. It wasn't a question, it was a statement.'

Pregnant pause.

'You're doing it again aren't you?'

'Just a couple of rounds,' I replied meekly, 'just the early ones. I'm not going all the way again.'

'You'd better not be.'

The problem was, or rather the problem is, that I do want to do it again. I had wanted to do it again from the minute the final whistle had blown between Portsmouth and Cardiff at Wembley three months ago. I hadn't wanted that match to finish. The gaping void of what happens next had been the worst part of the whole odyssey.

I can't speak for any of the other Road To Wembleyians out there, but for me the FA Cup has become like a drug, and I was desperate for another fix. I would tell Vanessa that I would need just one more hit, that it wasn't hurting anyone, that it was a straight-forward transaction between consenting adults, but the reality is that I was, I am hooked on that glimmering piece of silverware.

I don't so much want it, I need it.

So it was with a quickening heart that I turned off the Portsmouth Road in Sholing, into the VT Sports Ground, home of VT FC, on Saturday afternoon about an hour before kick off.

I had a semi-full car. My father, my son and myself. Three generations of Stoneman together at the start of the 2008/09 journey. A combination which echoed one of the chapters of my book, when my father, my grandfather and I had all visited an FA Cup match between Woodford Town and Orient in 1986.

The weather on the south coast had been grim for most of the summer, so much for global warming, this is more like global wet-ning, and clouds were scudding across the sky as the corner flags stood to attention in a stiff breeze.

But as the teams went through their opening calisthenics ahead of kick off, the summer sun threatened to break out among patches of blue sky.

VT FC have their roots in the works team of Vosper Thornycroft, a company formed in 1966 with the joining of two very different shipbuilding companies, Vosper Ltd of Portsmouth, famous for high speed craft and motor torpedo boats, and JI Thornycroft of Southampton, mainly noted for Destroyer building.

The modern day VT was formed in 1960 as a successor to Thornycrofts Woolston FC, which had folded eight years earlier, although teams from the Woolston Works had competed as early as 1884 under various names. In 1920/21 Thornycrofts reached the FA Cup First Round proper, meeting first Division Burnley at Fratton Park, and held them to a 0-0 draw, before losing 5-0 in the replay.

Today’s opposition Newport Pagnell Town was founded during 1963 as Newport Pagnell Wanderers, although they changed their name in 1972 when they moved to the Willen Road Sports Ground and swopped the Wanderers moniker for Town.

Having never won an FA Cup tie in seven years of trying, Pagnell went into this one very much as the underdogs, against a VT team who had finished as runners-up in the Wessex Premier last year. But in the opening exchanges it was clear that either VT hadn’t turned up, or that the players who had thought they had a God-given right to proceed in this season’s competition.

The match was scrappy, and suitable to its surroundings. The VT Sports Ground looks exactly like the sports ground of a works team. A vast expanse of area hosting a cricket pitch to one side, the football pitch on the other only two thirds enclosed and the interestingly-named VT Pigeon Club to one side of the changing rooms. I imagine it must do what it says on the tin.

How many light years are these Extra Preliminary Rounds from their Final cousins?

I was two thirds of the way around my customary first half circumnavigation of the pitch, one of the true pleasures of Non-League football, when it happened. A Pagnell goal. Not so much against the run of play, the play had not been running anywhere particularly, but definitely not in the VT script.

A Pagnell corner was swung across at the opposite end to where I was standing and thundered into the back of the net by midfielder Richard Armstrong. Cracking opener. VT huffed and puffed but threatened little and the compact Pagnell side where worthy leaders at the half time mark.

During the interval, I made my way around the pitch to the opposite end, confident that this would be the goal where all of the action was. Wrong again. Four minutes into the restart Danny Nicholls completed a neat Pagnell move with an edge-of-the-box finish that left Scott O'Rourke in the VT goal rooted to the spot.

Once again VT looked like the birthday party host who'd been denied the opportunity to win at Pin The Tail On The Donkey. They upped their puffing, brought on the subs, started to niggle and foul, and then set up a barrage of corners and free kicks in around the Pagnell box, all to nought. The men in green had decided that on Extra Preliminary Round day, for the first time in seven attempts, none shall pass...

Take a look at the picture below. It sums it all up. ONLY the FA Cup makes us feel like this.

• If you've enjoyed this report, click here to find out about The Road From Wembley, my forthcoming book about the FA Cup and how it has affected my life.

Comments

[Wayne Harmes (Grassroots) - Newport Pagnell FC]

Hi
Hi johnstoneman.
Thats an excellent report and its a great idea what you are doing again. I usually attend most of the away games the FA cup and Vase in particular (Moneyfields, Sandhurst and Wintney i visited last year) but it was my wifes friends 50th birthday party. Woman just dont understand! And i see the next round of the FA cup is on the 30th August (at home this time) when its my sisters 50th birthday party! I dont know these parties!!!! There like busses!!!
Anyway, would it be OK to possibly put your report and maybe the photos into the next Newport Pagnell FC home programme as it makes an interesting read? Thats if the programme editor wants to of coarse (just a thought gooders?).

Good luck in your aim again in attending every round.

Cheers
Wayne H.

[John Stoneman]

Hi Wayne, please feel free to use any of this in the programme and thanks for the kind comments. Good luck with those buses!

[pylonsider]

Lovely! Echoes what so many of us feel - and, great photies.
Tis us coming to Newport Pagnell on Saturday which is how I found this. Seen quite a lot of FA Cup 'follower' sites but this was a new one for me.
Doubtless your need for another fix will be there on Saturday so, make sure the wife is properly organised and you've got the butties and tea flask sorted for the journey.
No doubt a bunch of cheerful Centurion fans and equally cheerful Swans fans will get to meet you on Satuday.
No idea how it will go - that's the beauty of the Cup. We are 'supposed' to win because we are from a supposedly higher League but hey, you never know.

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They throw their shadows before them who carry their lantern on their back. That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life. Do you understand?

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The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. Do you agree?