As supporters and players of eighth tier AFC Sudbury gathered in their clubhouse for the draw of the FA Cup first round proper, few expected their dream tie to be pulled out of the hat.
Being drawn at home to League Two Colchester United, a club based only 15 miles away and ranked 89 places above them, has set up a derby fixture that will be televised live on the BBC.
“I’m standing here now looking at the huge BBC pantechnicons [TV trucks], their lighting rigging, their 20 cameras and all the rest of it,” chairman Andrew Long tells i.
“It’s one of things you say but you don’t believe it’s actually going to happen. When it was Colchester United, number 31, there was a moment of complete silence before pandemonium broke out in the clubhouse.”
That excitement has been channeled into hard work as the club readies itself for a match of exceptional importance. The public interest, media attention and the television preparations are all out of the ordinary for this volunteer-run club of part-time footballers who attract average attendances of around 300. Adding to this is the absence of Rick Matthews, one of the club’s joint-managers, who travelled to Canada last week to scatter his mother’s ashes.
“I’d be lying if I said preparations have been normal,” says Angelo Harrop, Matthews’ co-manager. “On Tuesday at training they were filming us, we’ve had a live press conference: it’s been a whirlwind of a week so far.
“We’ve tried to prepare as best we can but we also all have full-time jobs. As much as we want to prepare as professionally as we can, it doesn’t always happen.”
But if Colchester were to write Sudbury off as ill-prepared amateurs, they would be doing so at their peril. The club have lost only one game this season, are fourth in their league and could go top if they win their three games in hand.
They are the only club left in the FA Cup who entered in August’s preliminary round, earning approximately £100,000 since then as part of a remarkable run to the first round proper for only the second time in the club’s history.
In the final qualifying round, Sudbury defeated Dartford – who top the National League South – 3-1. Centre-half Lewis O’Malley, the club’s 19 year-old captain, wrapped up that win with a sumptuous finish into the bottom corner from just outside the box minutes before full-time.
“In all honesty, when that goal hit the back of the net in the 93rd minute or whatever it was, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” he says.
“I was overcome with a little bit of relief but mainly excitement knowing the game had been put to bed, and it’s been a surreal last couple of weeks going into the first round.”
That victory, which also saw Sudbury overturn a 1-0 half-time deficit, is inspiring the entire club ahead of the Colchester match.
O’Malley, Harrop and Long all agree that if they can pull off a win against the in-form leaders of the sixth tier, they can do the same against a side struggling for form in the fourth.
“I’m not saying we’re definitely going to win the game but I think it will be closer than people think,” Harrop says. “We have to make sure we’re in the game at half-time and obviously you can’t roll the dice every single day.
“But hopefully we just have that little bit of luck.”
AFC Sudbury vs Colchester United is live on BBC2 at 7:55pm on Fri 5 Nov
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3GUq4pN
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