Posh's proud Cup past

As the FA Cup third round gets under way this weekend, BBC Sport's Tony Adamson remembers Peterborough's giant-slaying Cup runs.

The FA Cup has always been different.

My old man once bought me a new cap to sit in the stand with him and watch non-league Peterborough United at home to Third Division Shrewsbury.

The visitors were 3-1 up at half-time and the cap was tugged down over the ears to conceal my distress.

Then a lanky inside-right by the name of Denis Emery, gliding across the mucky wastes of London Road like a human hovercraft, began to mesmerise the opposition.

London Road has witnessed a few upsets in its time

He conjured a winning fourth goal and in that heady moment when David leaves Goliath for dead, the cap set off in the general direction of Yarmouth and was never seen again.

The old man just had time to administer a thick ear before joining the celebrations in the Dog and Doublet.

"Posh" Peterborough were a Cup "minnow" who revelled in teasing the big fish.

Becoming a league club hardly diminished their appetite for dismantling the wheels of the high and mighty.

Palpitating hearts surged to bursting point when, on a cold, crisp winter's afternoon in 1966, we watched as Arsenal's aristocrats succumbed 2-1.

And the irrepressible Irishman Derek Dougan taunted Arsenal's stopper centre-half Ian Ure to distraction.

So snugly-packed were the terraced fans that withdrawing a handkerchief was out of the question and my wife spotted the ball only when it went into orbit.

More than any other competition, the FA Cup result decided the weekend mood of the supporters

Tony Adamson

'Posh's Greatest Day' and 'Oh! How the Mighty Fell' sang the following morning's headlines, alongside news of Billy Wright's resignation as Arsenal's beleaguered manager.

He had just seen his team of supremos, costing the princely sum of £250,000, humbled by a group of upstarts from the third division.

Be damned to the FA Cup!

The longer the Cup run, the more absurd the fantasies, the higher the emotions.

After victory over Swansea in the fifth round a Posh director was spotted kissing the manager, taking the 'romance' of the competition a peck too far.

Visions appeared of skipper Vic Crowe accepting the trophy from Her Majesty and draping a blue and white scarf about her person... the same Vic Crowe who put paid to such delusions of grandeur by being stretchered from Stamford Bridge minutes into the sixth round.

Tears flowed as easily as our defence was unlocked by the Pensioners, 5-1 was our poison, and nobody even had the energy to proclaim that we can now "concentrate on the league!"

I hope for a smoother ride than last season when I was ushered off to watch Northwich Victoria do battle with Leyton Orient

Tony Adamson

Cup defeat, whatever the status, is a bitter, tasteless pill.

As the final whistle went at Huddersfield to signal a fourth round exit, one female Posh fan keeled over in a dead faint.

Following, as it did, one of the team's less distinguished performances, one wag shouted , "I could have understood it had we won!"

More than any other competition, the FA Cup result decided the weekend mood of the supporters.

"If Barnsley won," wrote Michael Parkinson, a beloved fan, "we went to the pictures in the best seats.

"If they lost, there was sometimes a punch-up and the old man would come home from the boozer with a skinful saying the beer was off."

Blackpool take on the Premiership might of Charlton on Saturday

Unlike this week, in long lamented bygone days every match of every round was staged on the same afternoon.

The draw for the next round the following Monday had its traditional slot on the radio and was conducted with solemn and modulated tones and listened to with excited anticipation by fans country-wide. Now it's all changed.

Not until this season was it decided to limit the spread of a round over two days rather than three

But no longer, thank goodness, are we subjected to the draw for the next round midway through the previous one!

There is no doubt, the unseemly bartering and demands of terrestrial and satellite television have partially removed the gloss from the FA Cup.

However, my passion for the competition in general and for the lot of the underdog in particular still burns.

Tony Adamson will be reporting on Charlton's tie against Blackpool for BBC Radio Five Live on Saturday.