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October 31, 2012

2012-13 FA Cup, First Round Proper: location-map and attendances of the 80 clubs.

Filed under: 2012-13 FA Cup — admin @ 9:36 pm

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2012-13 FA Cup, First Round Proper: location-map and attendances of the 80 clubs


BBC/Football/FA Cup (bbc.co.uk/sport/football/fa-cup).

The 2012–13 FA Cup is the 132nd season of the competition. The FA Cup is open to all English clubs (plus a few Welsh clubs). It is the world’s oldest association football knock-out competition. 758 clubs were accepted into this season’s competition, which began on 11 August 2012. After 6 preliminary rounds, the 2012-13 FA Cup First Round Proper will begin on the weekend of 2-4 November 2012. 32 Non-league clubs which have survived the preliminary rounds (clubs from Levels 5 through 8) will continue on in the competition and are now joined by the 48 clubs in the Football League One (Level 3 / 24 clubs) and the Football League Two (Level 4 / 24 clubs). That makes for 80 clubs in the 1st Round. [Clubs from the Premier League (Level 1 / 20 clubs) and the Football League Championship (Level 2 / 24 clubs) enter the competition in the Third Round, which usually begins on the first weekend of the new year in January.].


Live televised matches, see this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_FA_Cup#Media_coverage.
Below: home grounds of the televised matches…
Friday’s televised match (on ESPN-UK & Fox Soccer Channel), Cambridge City v. MK Dons, at the City Ground in Cambridge, home of Cambridge City.
cambridge-city_city-ground_f.gif
Photo credit above – cambridge2000.com

Saturday’s televised match (on Fox Soccer Channel), Hereford United v. Shrewsbury Town, at Edgar Street in Hereford, Herefordshire, home of Hereford United.
hereford-united_edgar-street_.gif
Photo credit above – unattributed at thewashbag.com.


Sunday’s early televised match (on ITV), Braintree Town v. Tranmere Rovers, at Cressing Road in Braintree, Essex.
braintree-town_cressing-road_b.gif
Photo credits above – NorthEssexOnTour.

Sunday’s late televised match (on ESPN-UK & Fox Soccer Channel), Dorchester Town v. Plymouth Argyle, at the Avenue Stadium, in Dorchester, Dorset, home of Dorchester Town.
dorchester-town_the-avenue-stadium_d.gif
Photo credit above – tigerroar.co.uk.

    The 2 smallest clubs in the 2012-13 FA Cup (as measured by home league average attendance -
    Metropolitan Police FC (of Surrey), and Yate Town FC (of Gloucestershire).

The two smallest clubs in the 2012-13 FA Cup First Round are Metropolitan Police FC (of Surrey), who currently average 137 per game, and Yate Town FC (of Gloucestershire) who currently average 138 per game. [Attendances are listed at the far left of the map page, and are current average attendances from home league matches to 28 Oct. 2012).]. Met Police FC are a 7th Level club in the Isthmian League Premier Division (aka the Ryman Prem) – they currently are in 13th place. Yate Town are an 8th Level club in the Evo-Stik Southern League Division One South & West. Along with Slough Town FC (of Buckinghamshire), Yate Town are the lowest-ranked team in the FA Cup this season by league-level. But while Slough Town sit in 10th place in the Evo-Stik Southern League Central Division, Yate Town are in dead last, in 22nd place, in their league.

Metropolitan Police FC are the football club that represents the London Metropolitan Police force, and are located just outside the actual boundaries of Greater London. They play at Imber Court, a London police force facility in East Molesey, Surrey, which is just across the River Thames from the SW border of Greater London (see London inset map on the map page). From the Wikipedia page on the club…
{excerpt}…
‘The club’s home at Imber Court is a general-use police sports facility which the Force acquired in 1919. Significant ground improvements, including a new stand, have taken place since the 1980s, funded by a Force lottery scheme.’…{end of excerpt).

Metropolitan Police FC lets in ringers these days, but still many of the players who represent Met Police FC are part of the police force and put on the uniform and badge. The club was forced to begin allowing in non-police in 2004, when they could not find a goalkeeper and had to look outside the Metropolitan police force to fill the squad. So now the Met Police FC set-up serves a bit as a recruitment tool, because some of those young Non-league players who have played for Met Police in recent seasons have decided to take up a career in law enforcement. Last season, around 3 to 4 Met Police players in the starting squad were employed by Metropolitan Police, although the reserve squad is almost completely full of Met Police employees. The manager of Met Police FC, Detective Jim Cooper, works in the crime squad monitoring dangerous sex offenders.

Most of the spectators Met Police get for their home matches are away fans, or neutral fans, who don’t mind going because the facilities are quite good for the seventh division. They probably have good coffee, tea, and doughnuts and bacon butties there. But I don’t think many folks are actually rooting for the squad (root for the cops? you must be joking). There is a story of how when the club hosted AFC Wimbledon a few years ago, Wimbledon brought over 2,000 of their supporters (they’re located just a couple kilometers east) – there were 3,000 there at Imber Court that day, and when the home team (Met Police) scored the first goal of the match, it went dead silent. A few months ago, in their June 2012 issue, ForFourTwo magazine had a short article about Met Police FC [sorry I can't link to it because ForFourTwo does not archive most of their material online]. In the article the reporter attempted to find any actual Met Police FC supporters who had season tickets and no connection (ie, friends and family) to Met Police FC players. There were exactly two (2) actual season-ticket-holders of Met Police FC – a retired couple from Dorking, Surrey. Here is Joyce, one half of the Met Police FC season-ticket-holder fan-base (see this photo by Stuart Tree at flicker.com).

Metropolitan Police FC, Imber Court, Surrey.
metropolitan-police-fc_imber-court_f.gif
Photo credits above-
Photo by Ray Stanton via arsenal.com.
putajumperon.wordpress.com.

Here is what Joyce had to say about her and her husband Jim deciding to become (the only) Met Police FC supporters…
{excerpt from FourFourTwo article from June 2012 written by Nick Moore}…”We used to go to Kingstonian, but they were too money-oriented, so we came here 10 years ago and thought it was great. We have no police connections – I just like ‘em. We go home and away, and I even have a player scrapbook. Three seasons ago we said, ‘We’ve been coming down here seven years – you’ve got to give us season tickets’. They had to make them specially.”…{end of excerpt}.

Here is an article about attending a Metropolitan Police FC match, ‘Metropolitan Police FC‘ (theballissquare.co.uk).

Yate Town are located in Yate in southern Gloucestershire – on the eastern edge of Greater Bristol, 19 km, (or 12 miles) east of Bristol. Yate has a population of around 21,000 {2001 census figure} Yate Rovers were formed in 1906, and changed their name to Yate YMCA in 1946. In 1969, the club changed their name to Yate Town. The play at Lodge Road, which has a 2,000-capacity (236 seated, with roof covering for 400). From Pyramid Passion.co.uk, ‘Yate Town FC‘ (pyramidpassion.co.uk). Yate Town are nicknamed the Bluebells, and wear white jerseys with dark blue pants. The club has been in the Southern League set-up since 1989-90, although they were relegated back to the 9th Level in 1999-2000, returning back 3 years later to the second-tier of the Southern League [8th Level] in 2003-04. As mentioned, the club sits in the relegation-zone currently, so it is hoped the squad can use this Cup run as the impetus to some good league form.

In Newport, Wales on Tuesday 23 October 2012, in an FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round replay, Yate Town defeated 5th Level club Newport County 3-1 to qualify for the FA Cup First Round for the first time in the club’s history. It was a pretty big upset seeing as Yate Town are 3 leagues below and 89 league places below Newport County in the football ladder – Newport County currently are in 1st place in the Conference National. The historic goals came from Tom Knighton, Scott Thomas, and Matt Groves. Admittedly, the equalizing goal for Yate Town – Knighton’s goal in the 73rd minute – came from a soft penalty, but Yate Town held their own for the rest of the 90 minues and then both Thomas and Groves scored in extra time to seal it. Match report at newport-county.co.uk, here. Here are video highlights of the match from itv.com, ‘Highlights of Yate Town’s win against Newport County‘ [scroll one-third down the page there for this video]

yate-town_lodge-road_newport-v-iate_fa-cup2012-13_u.gif
Photo credits above – newport-county.co.uk.
itv.com/news/west/sport.
agroundhoppersdiary.blogspot.com/2011/12/yate-town-lodge-road
yate-town.blogspot.com.
tigerroar.co.uk/yatetown.

Yate Town currently average 138 per game (home league matches), and there were 132 away fans at that FA Cup replay in Newport, South Wales. Yes, I know it is not all that far from Bristol to Newport (about 192 km. or 109 miles), but on that Tuesday evening, 95 percent of the current fan base of Yate Town (as measured by average home attendance) traveled to Wales to support their club.

The FA Cup draw has been kind to Yate Town, because they will now play fellow-Gloucestershire–based Cheltenham Town at Whaddon Road in the FA Cup First Round on 3 November 2012. I am sure there will be more than 132 travelling fans representing Yate Town there on Saturday.

Here is an article about attending a Yate Town match, ‘Yate Town (Lodge Road)‘ (agroundhoppersdiary.blogspot.com).
___

Thanks to Altrincham FC official site for the photo of the Altrincham 2012-13 home jersey badge.
Thanks to soccerway.com for attendance figures (for Football League clubs, and Conference clubs).
Thanks to nonleague.co.uk for attendance figures (for 7th-level clubs [Northern, Isthmian, and Southern Premier Leagues]).
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘2012–13 FA Cup‘.
Thanks to bbc.co.uk/football for the Fixture list image on the map page.
Thanks to Gloucester City fansite Tiger Roar for aerial photos of the grounds of Dorchester Town and Yate Town, http://www.tigerroar.co.uk.
Thanks to Nick Moore at FourFourTwo, http://fourfourtwo.com.

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