2020-21 FA Cup: location-map, with fixtures; with attendances from the previous season
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By Bill Turianski on 31 October 2020; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-The competition…FA Cup (en.wikipedia.org).
-BBC’s page on the competition…bbc.com/fa-cup.
First Round matches are set for Friday the 6th through Monday the 9th of November.
The opening match on Friday the 6th will feature the lowest-placed club still alive in the competition, 9th-level side Skelmersdale United of Lancashire. Skelmersdale play in the North West Counties League, and are the first NWCL club to reach the First Round in 23 years (since 1997). Skelmersdale will travel to North Yorkshire to play Harrogate Town (who are a 4th-division side newly promoted to the Football League for the first time). This match will be televised {televised matches, here}.
The map page has a new template…the map now features only England & Wales (I have cropped out Scotland). I did this to give the map-area more space.
And I sure was glad I did make the map larger, when I saw the results of the Fourth Qualifying Round. Because there are two examples of clubs qualifying for this year’s FA Cup 1st Round that are located less than 3 miles apart…
•Two clubs have qualified from Canvey Island, on the north shore of the Thames Estuary in Essex. Both Concord Rangers FC (a 6th-tier club in the National League South) and Canvey Island FC (an 8th-level club in the Isthmian League North) have qualified for the 1st Round. As near as I could ascertain, these two clubs’ grounds are around 1.7 miles (or 2.8 km) apart.
•And 36 miles west of that, on the south side of the River Thames, two clubs from the Borough of Greenwich in South East London, have qualified for the 1st Round. One of them you would certainly have heard of: League One/3rd-division side Charlton Athletic FC. The other club you might very likely never have heard of: Cray Valley Paper Mills FC (an 8th-level side in the Isthmian South-East). As near as I could ascertain, these two clubs’ grounds are around 2.4 miles (or 3.9 km) apart.
(Note: the two clubs from Oxford that have qualified for the 1st Round – 6th-tier side Oxford City (in the north-east of Oxford) and League One/3rd-division side Oxford United (in the south-east of Oxford) are located about 4.1 miles (6.6 km) apart.)
This is Cray Valley’s first-ever appearance in the FA Cup 1st Round, so I put together an illustration for them below, along with illustrations for this season’s other two 1st-Round first-timers: King’s Lynn Town FC (a 5th-division side) and South Shields FC (a 7th-tier side). On Sunday the 8th of November, Cray Valley will travel to Hampshire to face 6th-tier side Havant & Waterlooville (at 12:45 GMT).
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- The 3 clubs making their first appearance in the FA Cup First Round…Cray Valley Paper Mills, King’s Lynn Town, South Shields.
Cray Valley (PM) FC – FA Cup 1st Round debut in 2020-21, for the 101-year-old club…
Photo an Image credits above – Nash’s Cray Valley Paper Mills, aerial photo (circa 1930s) unattributed at cvths.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/nashs-paper-mill-war-diary. Main Stand, photo by the Wycombe Wanderer at footygrounds.blogspot.com. Cray Valley (PM) manager Kevin Watson, photo from pitchero.com/clubs/crayvalleypmfc. Ade Yussef celebrates his brace with teammates and fans, photo by Dave Cumberbatch at crayvalleypmfc.com. Francis Babalola after scoring the winner versus Maidenhead United, photo by Dave Cumberbatch via 853.london. Cray Valley players run to celebrate with the few supporters allowed into the ground, photo by Dave Cumberbatch via kentonline.co.uk.
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King’s Lynn Town FC – FA Cup 1st Round debut in 2020-21, for the 10-year-old phoenix-club…
Photo and Image credits above – Aerial shot [satellite image], screenshot from bing.com/maps. Main Stand, photo by Owen Pavey at footballgroundguide.com/king-lynn-town-the-walks. Standing crowd in front of fully-occupied Main Stand [photo circa August 2019], photo by Ian Burt at edp24.co.uk/sport/kings-lynn-town Ian Culverhouse, photo by Geoff Moore at edp24.co.uk/sport. Adam Marriott, photo from lynnnews.co.uk/sport.
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South Shields FC (III) – FA Cup 1st Round debut in 2020-21, for the 46-year-old phoenix-club…
Photo an Image credits above – view of South Shields, photo by David Dixon at geograph.org.uk. Aerial image of Mariners Park from bing.com/maps/[birds-eye view]. Crowd at Mariners Park circa 2019, three-deep in the standing, with Clock Stand in background, photo from southshieldsfc.co.uk. Darius Osei scores in 4th QR, photo by Ken Wilson at flickr.com/southshieldfcimages. Robert Briggs doubles the lead in 4th QR, screenshot from video uploaded by South Shields FC at youtube.com. Post-match, 4th QR: Dual-managers Lee Picton and Graham Fenton celebrate with players and staff after the win, screenshot from video uploaded by South Shields FC at youtube.com.
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Sources…
Thanks to all, at the links below…
-Blank map of English Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Counties, by Nilfanion, at File:English metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties 2010.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Blank relief map of Greater London, by Nilfanion (using UK Ordnance Survey data), at File:Greater London UK relief location map.jpg.
-Blank relief map of Greater Manchester, by Nilfanion (using Ordnance Survey data), at File:Greater Manchester UK relief location map.jpg.
-Fixtures list: screenshot from bbc.com/fa-cup.
Attendance figures…
-European-Football-Statistics.co.uk (2019-20 average attendances for the 3rd and 4th division.)
-nonleaguematters.co.uk. (2019-20 average attendances for all non-League clubs on the map, from the 5th division to the 9th division.)
-Thanks to Dave Cumberbatch at crayvalleypmfc.com/photos, for the 3 photos.
-Thanks to Cray Valley (PM) FC, for retweeting my tweet; twitter.com/[@CrayValleyPM].