The Gardeners' World Blog

As long as I've been following football, the FA Cup third round has been the perfect way to blow away the Christmas and New Year cobwebs. Except for that weird 1999-2000 season when Manchester United withdrew because of the World Club Championship and the third round was played pre-Xmas, with Darlington reinstated as "lucky losers". Those were tough times for the venerable old trophy.

I'm old enough to remember non-League Hereford beating Newcastle in 1972 and my first weekend at BBC Sport coincided with Sutton beating Coventry in 1989. By January 1992, I was editing Middlesbrough 2-1 Man City for Match of the Day. Boro were outside the top flight at the time so it was something of a shock: I thought I'd be cutting a luxuriously long edit of the lead match until news reached my edit channel that Wrexham (92nd the previous season) had just beaten reigning champions Arsenal.