FA Cup disgrace: Time for action, not just statements

And of course that must be sought. Then again – compensation. It’s one thing the Premier League and those who vandalise lower-level football for their own gains are rather good at.

Want to ransack the EFL Trophy, a competition that should have nothing to do with you? Pony up some money to make the moans go away. Fancy hijacking youth football under the convenient guise of the Elite Player Performance Plan? Hey, there might be a few quid in it...

One imagines, then, that they’ll be able to ratch under the cushions and find a few spare coins should complaints over the scrapping of FA Cup replays hit a high enough pitch. Here’s some more pounds, little folk. Now sod off and let the important people get on with shaping the game.

No – compensation, however important and welcome, won’t do on its own this time. If the wider sport wants to state its case properly, it must go further, beyond calls for more cash, beyond even the numerous powerful statements we’ve seen in the last 24 hours.

It’s time to be more radical, more mutinous. To consider boycotts, mass resignations and actions that show every last thing cannot be bought and sold.

This means you too, John.

According to Carlisle United’s statement on the controversy, their FA Council member – director and former owner John Nixon – was not informed of the FA Cup changes until 15 minutes before they were announced on Thursday morning.

This is not just the sidestepping of an incidental figure in football governance. Nixon has spent much of his recent life on the EFL board and on other Football Association committees. He chaired the EFL Trust for ten years and, notably, had a spell as chair of the FA Cup committee.

In 2017 the latter role was enough for Nixon to pay a visit to Old Trafford to meet Sir Bobby Charlton and hand over a ceremonial replica of the famous trophy to Manchester United. It also earned him an invitation to that season's FA Cup final as one of the official dignitaries.

Carlisle in FA Cup replay action against Liverpool in 1974 (Image: PA)

The organisers, one assumes, did not spring the above on him like an Apprentice candidate told the cars will be outside in 20 minutes. Such matters were no doubt taken to be important enough for Nixon to be briefed well in advance, so arrangements could be made and speeches polished.

And now this – a quarter of an hour? This is the decency afforded someone who’s warmed enough leather seats in football’s top corridors to fill a furniture showroom?

Is this not just what United said this whole debacle is – an absolute disgrace? Is this not the height of disrespect, not just to Nixon but any number of fellow long-servers who’ve held positions designed to promote and safeguard the game?

Does this not make them wonder what they’re there for, after all? Does it not show that, when push comes to shove (and, with the Premier League involved, it tends to be shove first) their voice is not relevant, not really – that their name, their service, counts for diddly squat when the big cheeses want to do something and do it without due consultation (the FA, in a scrambling statement, claim the EFL and others were well aware of changes to the calendar, including the likely scrapping of replays)?

Easy to say this from a media perspective, but still – is this not a resigning opportunity, John? In fact, is this not a resigning matter, all of you, who’ve been trampled over by this dismal plan with its Orwellian claim that it will “strengthen” the Cup and with its whiff of pre-regulator tactics?

Imagine the power not of a collection of firmly-worded statements but a gaggle of walk-outs. The march of the blazers. Red lines reached, folders and paperwork and FA jackets handed back in. Men and women purporting to represent the soul of the game, from grassroots to EFL and higher, saying, 'This won’t do, and we’re off, together.'

John Nixon, right, with the EFL's Rick Parry in 2019 (Image: Stuart Walker)

It might not trouble Pep Guardiola and his fellow managers as they contemplate a utopia without having to stretch their tiny squads to host Rotherham United and Bristol Rovers on a Tuesday night. But it would bring a certain constitutional crisis to the game’s governing body, immediately. The optics, for the FA and by extension Premier League, would be dreadful.

A rebellion by people who do not normally rebel, even a simple statement of principle by an individual, would make a certain noise.

What, at this point, do you have to lose, John? You’ve clocked up a great many years inside football, received long-service recognition from the EFL Trust, got all the insight a person could wish for at the peak of the game’s running, had the cup-final perks and the graveyard-shift document-filling duties.

Imagine the legacy, now, of being known as a senior figure who walked out in the interests of all those fighting against the armies of the arrogantly rich? Imagine using that elbow-bending power to persuade others to join you, too?

Imagine…that’s probably where this will stay. Unless, John, you fancy surprising us. More would thank you than you’d believe.