I can only thank you for being here today, for once again daring to dip your toe in the pool of hope that is the FA Cup when you’d be right to fear another dunking. 

For the sixth consecutive season we have a home draw in our first game in the FA Cup and five of those have been against lower league opposition (even the sixth opponent managed to get relegated). Our record? Five defeats. It’s nowhere near good enough and our fans rightly greet each new cup campaign with gallows humour. Our only decent run in recent years was also our toughest, beating Bognor Regis, Eastbourne Borough and Havant & Waterlooville on the way to the 1st Round Proper. Perhaps in that fact lies the secret of our unsuccess. 

We can keep insisting the club takes the cups seriously (we do), keep saying it’s a priority for the manager (it is) and keep saying the players care (they do) but the results don’t improve. We can hide behind howling that opposition teams come here and ‘up their game’. Really? This is the FA Cup, it should be just as special for us. We can hide behind some extremely questionable refereeing, but in how many of those defeats did we really deserve to have won? One out of five maybe? 

We overthink the cups, we should treat today like every other game at Champion Hill. On any given Saturday we don’t doubt the ability of those in the dugout and on the pitch to deliver because we know that they have what it takes, that they have the talent, that they have the desire and that they have the fans behind them so not approaching today as something different is the first step to success. 

And today we welcome East Grinstead Town, conquerors of Bognor Regis Town in the last round, they arrive high on that sweet smell of success that comes from dumping a club from a higher league out of the cup and so showing them the respect they deserve is the second step towards reversing this trend. When you enter the cup at a later round than your opposition you are meeting a team already on a roll, one who has wins under their belt. So our third step is remembering that our opponents today have momentum in this competition and it is up to us to rise to their level, not the other way round just because we happen to play higher up the pyramid in another competition. They’ve proved themselves by getting here, all we’ve done so far is have our ball drawn out of a bag. 

Three steps to success. Remember this is our home, remember our opponents are here by beating sides from higher leagues and remember we are playing catch up with them in the FA Cup. Get those three right and our chance of success will improve.