Finally - proper FA Cup experience arrives for Eastbourne Borough

Sports manager Danny Bloor and captain Charlie Walker - ready for Blackpool

Over the seasons, Eastbourne Borough’s FA Cup record has been pale, with supporters wearily shrugging and always waiting for next year.

This time, it isn’t next year. It’s this Sunday. And Blackpool FC arrive at Priory Lane for the biggest game in Borough’s 55-year history.

Maddeningly, Sports supporters are still barred from watching their heroes in the flesh, but they will have the major compensation of watching the full match live on television – sadly, not free to air, but most fans will no doubt find their way to a screen showing the BT Sport transmission.

Priory Lane this week has been humming with activity. By Tuesday, the gantries were already set up, clanky and incongruous above the North Stand, and everything was falling nicely into place. BBC cameras have been spotted too, with Juliette Parkin reporting direct from the ground for BBC South East.

The press bench could have been filled six or eight times over.

The ground is scrubbing up nicely. Terraces, empty of fans, will at least be decked out with flags and banners in red and black, or tangerine and white, and in the main stand, some fans will have their cardboard cut-out photo sitting proudly on their favourite seat.

Only once before, in 2005, have the Sports entertained Football League opposition. A 1-1 draw with Oxford United, secured by Ollie Rowland’s last-minute penalty, was the stuff of club legend. But three subsequent sorties into the first round proper led only to defeats against non-league opposition in Weymouth, Barrow and Braintree.

This time, it’s a proper name. Only a decade ago, Blackpool were in the Premier League. Tap into older memories and Pool were winning the FA Cup – the historic “Matthews Final” of 1953 when the two Stanleys, Matthews and Mortensen, turned a 3-1 deficit into a 4-3 triumph over Bolton Wanderers.

Since then, fortunes have been mixed. The Lancashire club has been savaged by ownership disputes.

But right now, Blackpool have hit a bit of form in League One. Borough’s job is to somehow stop them extending it to the grand old FA Cup.