At the start of the season the Club offered a new type of player kit sponsorship, where you get to keep the player's shirt at the end...

One of the first to come forward & offer his support was Simon Barnett, who wanted the name of his-in a nice sort of way-slightly off the wall football blog THE REAL FA CUP as a sponsor of one of the home shirts, & he was allocated Ellis Green.

We decided it was time to have a little chat with him, partly as a little way of thanking him for his backing, and also to find out what his blog site was all about.

I understand that Dulwich Hamlet may have been some sort of inspiration for your blog.

"Yeah, what happened was me & Damon Threadgold both live locally, & we saw that Dulwich were at home to Broxbourne Borough that day, in the FA Cup, in 2008, I think it was. We thought it would be sort of interesting and funny to do that old thing from 'Match of the Day', following a team through to the Final at Wembley, supporting the team who won each round. As it happens it was a draw, and our first question to each other was along the lines of where on earth is Broxbourne? The answer was somewhere near Cheshunt, and we went along, with Dulwich winning 2-1, and it was a really good game."

So how often do you get to watch Dulwich Hamlet games?

"Well, I've a feeling that was it for the first season, I think, well not quite. No more than two or three at most. As the year wore on I got lazier. Please forgive me, there are lots of nice bars and pubs in East Dulwich. This season I'm hoping to get to at least fifteen games or more."

Do you remember how it went, round by round?

"Yes, sort of. In the next round we went to Harrow Borough on a Wednesday night, where Dulwich lost a replay, in a tight game,against Hendon, as I recall. In the next round Hendon lost to Telford United, at Wembley, with a few mates. That's Vale Farm, home of Wembley FC, I might add, but hey, how many people get to go to Wembley on their FA Cup run? I did! Teford were on the north/south borders, when it comes to football, so were placed in the northern half of the draw, for the fourth qualifying round. And they came out of the hat away to Northwich Victoria. We sort of said to each other, come on let's go up there, but we both got up late, and texted each other, deciding not to bother. Instead we picked Havant & Waterlooville at Crawley Town, which Havant won 3-0. And the Northwich versus Telford match was abandoned at half time due to floodlight failure! After that we realised our 'round by round' thing was a bit unfeasable, even if we had lives, and we decided to pick and choose our FA Cup games, based on what we thought might be a good game, and what players we might want to see."

In a previous chat with you, you said you're a bit of a 'disillusioned' Arsenal fan. What's all that about? And have Dulwich disillusioned you yet?

"Dulwich haven't yet, I've got the shirt! I play five-a-sides on Fridays, & actually wore it for the first time the other day. As for Arsenal, well I've still got a season ticket. I go with my dad, & he's partially sighted, & I talk him through the matches. The whole Dulwich Hamlet supporting thing can get a bit awkward, I once went to a Hamlet game, & dashed to Arsenal missing the first fifteen minutes, which I don't like to do. As we all have our funny supstitions, mine is shouting 'Come on you Gunners!' as the last player comes out of the tunnel, so I missed that."

So what's your commentary style then?

"Ha! It's not quite the same trying to describe the match to partially sighted people. You have to be a lot more descriptive, you explain the singing,things thst sre happening elsewhere, & so on. It's actually quite tiring. In the old days at Highbury all of the blind & partially sighted all sat together, with their own dedicated commentary team, once or twice the system broke, & dad made me tell him what was going on. Over the years I just did the talking more and more, & he prefers me to the official stuff, as he gets my very biased viewpoint & the swearing; as well as the 'one to one' discussion about who playing well like other ordinary, but sighted, fans."

Tell us a little about your website 'partner in crime' Damon Threadgold.

"He is actually an Ipswich Town fan, and without wishing to speak for him, he's probably even more disillusioned with them, than I am with Arsenal. He does much more work on the 'Real FA Cup' than me, doing most of the tweeting side of things on Twitter, truth be told he's much more dedicated to it than myself."

So how did you originally find out about Dulwich Hamlet?

"I don't know really, I suppose it just probably came from taking a keen interest in football. Although I'm Arsenal, I've always kept an eye on other clubs. I grew up in Camberley, but when I moved to Brixton, Dulwich Hamlet were just down the road, and if you know your football you can't not have heard about a club with Dulwich's history, so it had to be investigated."

It's a national cliche, but is the 'Magic of the Cup' still true?

(Sighs)
"Hmm, let me think about that. Personally speaking, the reason we started our blog and have continued, is because it is still magical & excites. But from what I've seen, non league clubs in the Cup care so much more, than top League sides, the magic has just shifted down a few leagues. By the time Christmas comes round everyone is asking that question, but nobody needs to ask it in September, because all of the teams who are playing in it them, like Dulwich Hamlet, know how magic the Cup is."

Looking on your site, there's something called 'The Fake FA Cup', so what is it & how did we do?

"Ask Damon, it was his invention! He did a few things on Twitter, and one was to ask people to suggest new ideas & idea to spice up the FA Cup, which got a fair bit of interest as people used their imagination, and one was to have a completely open draw, with no seeding whatsoever. So we did it, and we allocated clubs to numbers, and got people to pcik their 'lucky number' & we made the draw like that! To be honest I can't remember how Dulwich fared."

Seeing as you like 'fake' things, imagine that we were to reach the fourth round proper, going down in a gloriously unlucky defeat to your beloved Arsenal, only 1-0 in front of a full house at The Emirates. Who would you like us to have beaten on the way?

"It goes without saying I'd love to see Dulwich not just beat, but thrash Tottenham. It would be here at Champion Hill, in our redeveloped stadium, with three new stands, & a 15,000 capacity! Before that it would be Chelsea, having fallen from grace, not longer in the top divisions. Abramovich got bored, pulled the plug & left them penniless. We would have hammered them to highlight their previous mistakes. In the first round? I don't know really, I wouldn't really want to play Millwall. I wouldn't say no to kocking out Tooting, but that would mean they'd had a bit of a cup run themselves. Maybe we could have beaten them 6-0 in the second qualifying round, or something. Leeds would be good, as it would mean they'd dropped down again, as long as Warnock was still in charge, maybe anyone managed by Warnock. A good long away trip for the fans, Torquay, perhaps. Or up to Carlisle, to play at a proper old ground."

On the front of your blog you state as your by-line: "Struggling bravely against the grim realities of contemporary capitalism". Erm, in plain working class English please?

"That's got to be credited to the flamboyant Hamlet fan Wolfgang Moneypenny, who used it on one of his videos, or maybe on Twitter. Wherever it was, we spotted it & it caught our eye, we liked it & promptly nicked it! We used to have something about Broxbourne & how the blog started, but when saw Wolfie's statement we saw it cover how we felt about the modern game, & how it rekindled our love of football through non league."

And, to finish, back to the current Dulwich Hamlet side. How does it compare to the one you first saw, under Craig Edwards five or so years ago?

"To be honest it's a bit difficult to say, as we didn't see too many matches. But we've been to lots of cup and league games with non league sides, & I can honestly say that apart from very high up in the Conference non league is a great experience, with a good standard of football, which goes totally against the everyone's preconcieved classic steeotype of non league. The current team is a exciting as you will see anywhere."