With 15 seconds of normal time remaining, Dara O’Shea collected the ball in midfield, saw two teammates out on the left wing and played a 20-yard pass that bisected them perfectly. Behind one goal, a loud clatter of seats as a hundred West Brom supporters considered it a suitable moment to make their exit. Chesterfield supporters cheered as loud as if they had scored a fourth goal.
Three minutes later, the away end was bouncing and three sides of the Proact Stadium were frozen still. At half-time, the locals half-joked, half-predicted that a 3-2 lead would become a 4-3 defeat. They had just become convinced of victory when it was snatched away.
The West Brom supporters who had stayed thrashed about in glee. It didn’t matter that the FA Cup is a secondary priority now. It didn’t matter that rescuing a draw against non-league opposition is no cause for celebration. One of football’s greatest aspects is how any equaliser or winner provokes much the same auto-response. You can’t choose when the emotion comes and relief represents itself much the same as joy.
With West Brom this week taking out a loan secured against the club’s assets, the strength of this squad may soon become a heavy weight around the neck; for an FA Cup run, the depth is a blessing. Carlos Corberan named a completely different starting XI from the 1-0 win over Reading on Monday – two of the attacking players (Karlan Grant and Grady Diangana) cost £25m in transfer fees and several others were summer arrivals.
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The Proact Stadium is an unlikely venue for FA Cup romance. Its 10,500 seats are fitted into four one-tier stands that are open at each corner and thus allow precious noise to escape. The curved roofs of the two main stands give the impression of a Premier League stadium – the Etihad perhaps – that has sunken deep below the ground until only its last 25 rows are visible above the surface.
But football and fate find a way. Chesterfield, who twice fell behind, produced a performance not just of guts and endeavour but also wonderful technical ability and resolve. “Championship, you’re having a laugh,” sang the Spireites to those stood in the away end and looked like they were having anything but until the final knockings.
The two sets of supporters partook in mild geographic banter and took turns at each other as first-half goals arrived with alarming regularity. Perhaps Chesterfield vs West Brom should be the Amnesia Derby, given how often “Who the f_____g hell are you?” passed from one stand and then back again.
There is no way of expressing it without sounding deeply patronising, but this was a proper football match. After the exploits of the last two months, maybe it’s best explained thus: neither club is owned by an actual country or used as a tool of soft power and at no point – before, during or after the game – did condiment weirdo Salt Bae appear on the pitch.
There must always be a star, the name that sticks in the mind of the obsessive for months but who will be forgotten by the masses by the time the next round draws near. This was Armando Dobra’s 15 minutes, scorer of two goals and a celebration that saw him face down an away end that had little interest in friendship.
Dobra is an Albanian Under-21 international who was born in England and joined Chesterfield from Ipswich Town in the summer. He’s also everything you wanted in a lower-league winner: mercurial, desperate to take on a full-back, liable to roll around the floor occasionally and tempestuous enough to get himself into trouble three times a game.
Having squeezed ahead, Chesterfield tried to achieve something far more impressive: killing the game. When the direct balls came, captain Jamie Grimes won header after header and Ross Fitzsimons was near perfect in goal on the rare occasions when a Baggie wriggled free. A word too for Arsenal loanee Tim Akinola, whose driving runs from central midfield created the space for Dobra.
But class usually, eventually, pays and stoppage time does funny things to tired minds. Bright Thomas-Asante scored in the first two minutes, the last two minutes and was West Brom’s best player in the 90 in between. A resolute defence played a ramshackle offside trap, Thomas-Asante had a fifth of Derbyshire in which to stand and a non-league dream was punctured, at least for now.
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