Crawley Town opinion: FA Cup - a glorious distraction or the start of another money-making adventure?

The FA Cup, a glorious distraction or the start of another money-making adventure? After beating Maidenhead United by two goals to one on Saturday and drawing Chesham or Lincoln City at home in the 2nd Round only time will tell.

The game itself saw Robbie Elliott make numerous changes from the starting eleven that played against Northampton, with only three players, Jojo Wollacott, Toby Mullarkey and Jeremy Kelly, keeping their places after that 3-0 defeat at Sixfields. Just how many of those changes were forced upon him will become clear on Tuesday, when we face Burton Albion at the Pirelli stadium.

Injury wise, Junior Quitirna, Dion Conroy and Josh Flint are definitely injured, and Ronan Darcy is also rumoured to be suffering from a groin strain, whilst Wollacott was substituted on Saturday after a coming together with a goal post and a Maidenhead forward. By the time you read this in print, we will have played and hopefully beaten Burton Albion and there will be some clarity as regards who is injured and who was rested.

Back to the cup match, it was hard fought by both sides, but, with eight changes to the Crawley side, it was inevitable, I feel, that we would need time to settle down and get on top of a much more integrated unit. Our back three was Joy Mukena, Mullarkey and Benjamin Tanimu with Kelly, Cameron Bragg, Panutche Camara, Rushian Hepburn-Murphy, Jack Roles, Tola Showumni and Gavan Holohan playing in front of them with their roles seemingly pretty open to interpretation.

Up until the 64th minute, when Maidenhead’s Shawn McCoulsky captialised on a rare error by Mukena to put the Magpies into the lead, I believed it was only a matter of time before we scored and took control but, after going behind, we suffered another injury blow which made our eventual victory even more amazing to say the least. This was of course the injury to Wollacott in the 72nd minute which led to 19-year-old Jasper Sheikh coming on for his debut. He was nervous to start, almost gifting a chance to ex Red Devil, Nathan Ferguson, but soon settled down and produced a capable performance with one top class save which contributed as much to our eventual victory as did the 95th minute Tony Mullarkey equaliser and the 116th minute winner from Tola Showumni.

The 600 or so Crawley Town fans who made the journey to Maidenhead went home with a mixture of feelings, I’m sure. Without doubt elated with the result but worried about the mounting injury situation and wondering whether we would seek to get another emergency loan goalkeeper in, either to take Jojo's spot or to back up Jasper on the bench. One fan also went home with a shirt!! Bradley Ibrahim, on for Benjamin Tanimu in the 72nd minute, belted the ball off the pitch to stop an attack which caught an unsuspecting Crawley fan straight in the face from about five yards. Bradley immediately showed his concern for him and at the end of the game stripped off his shirt and handed it over to his happy “victim”.

Yes, it was a struggle, but we did something that Huddersfield and Northampton couldn’t do, beat a non-league side.

To round off my weekend perfectly, I spent half an hour talking to David Simmonds and his family at Crawley Museum. David played for our reserves back in 1954, and at the age of 92 it looks like he still might be able to play in goal if required. He has so many memories of local football and has loaned me some photographs for when we get the CTFC museum up and running.