What’s your abiding early FA Cup memory? It might be Shearer smashing the ball in against Spurs at Old Trafford. Or Rob Lee’s bullet header of an equaliser at Wembley against Chelsea. God, if you’re in your early (hundred and) teens, it might even be the last time we won the bloody thing.

Mine? Listening to Charles Harrison on Metro Radio for what seemed like the majority of my conscious life as he described the interminable saga of our 1989 third round tie with Watford. Like War and Peace, but without the exciting bits and with all the extra sections added that Tolstoy cut to make it short and snappy.

In case this (not so) little episode in NUFC history has hitherto passed you by, let me enlighten you. Jim Smith’s plucky relegation-bound side somehow contrived to play out more than seven (SEVEN) hours of near permanent deadlock with Hertfordshire’s most famous (only?) club, separated in the end only by a Glenn Roeder own goal in the 113th minute of the fourth match. Our longest cup run in twenty years and we didn’t even get beyond the third round.

I was definitely at both of the home ties. It’s just that I can’t summon a single memory of either the original match or the second replay, as we yo-yoed up and down the M1 for most of January. Not surprising, as those two ties yielded 210 goalless minutes between them. Mind you, that counted as a promising upturn in form for that season.

So instead of those home games, my memory is of listening in my teenage bedroom to the away commentaries on my “compact” midi hifi system, which in reality occupied more space than the computers used by NASA for the moon landings. The first replay was a veritable 2-2 thriller (Brock 45’, Mirandinha 51’ (pen); Redfearn 1’, 62’ (pen)), before we were mercifully put of our misery precisely 261 goalless minutes later.

Of course, the introduction of penalties and a single replay have long since consigned such epic psychodramas to history, but our last connection to that bygone romantic era was finally severed this week with the grimly inevitable news that, from next season, FA Cup replays will be a thing of the past.

Playing two games on the other side of the world within five days of completing an arduous season? No problem! Hosting Rochdale in a replay at St James’ and splitting the gate receipts with them? Absolutely not. Burnout! Fixture congestion! Horror! The world will end. Player welfare is uppermost in our minds.

Naturally, the main issue of concern here is not the nostalgia of dinosaur Larry Davids like yours truly, for whom the TikTok-streets-skills world of 15-second clips are nothing but a vast ocean of unceasing incomprehensible noise. Rather, the way in which the decision was taken and its impact on lower league teams remind us that there are always new depths to which football governance can sink.

When Rochdale played us off the park in the second half at the fabulously named Crown Paints Arena only a few years ago (oh Joelinton!), a replay on Barrack Road was the least they deserved. Likewise, when then non-league Stevenage rebounded from Shearer’s third-minute goal to claim an entirely warranted 1-1 draw in 1998, they’d earned their windfall, even if they were pretty odious.

Like most of you, I imagine, I reacted with weary resignation to a decision that has seemed inevitable for a while. We’re so used to the arrogant unaccountable decisions of the entitled self-serving PL elite that they barely register any more. This, of course, is what they rely on, that we will just give in, allowing them free rein to chase more and more money, while hiding behind hypocritical homilies about player safety.

And so, to see managers like Arteta and Guardiola – with a combined total of zero cup replays this season – welcome the move was as depressing as it was predictable. “It is much better”, opined Pep, who we can only assume is about to announce that he’s cancelling City’s pre-season jaunts across the globe, refusing to play any of the extra Champions League group games next season, and withdrawing City from the new extended 32-team World Club Cup that’s being played in the US over the summer this year.

At least Arteta has taken effective pre-emptive action to “protect the players” by ensuring that Arsenal won’t qualify for FIFA’s shiny new shindig in the States. In fact, it’s touching to see Ten Hag and Poch taking player protection to whole new levels by so effectively reducing the number of European games their teams play.

Ultimately, it seems this was a deal done for TV money. Quelle surprise. The FA agreed to the Premier League’s request in exchange for more exposure for the fifth round which has been returned to a weekend slot and their help selling the overseas TV rights that are the FA’s most valuable asset. At the same time, the self-righteous EFL are not as blameless as they claim, apparently accepting the loss of replays as the price for a new financial deal which has now failed to emerge.

Maybe we shouldn’t mourn the loss of replays. Without them, I would never have seen Marc Hottiger score in a black and white shirt, true, but then again I wouldn’t have had to deal with the ongoing trauma of the 0-2 at Luton in 1994 which still stalks me to this day, the spectre of a Steve Bruce “managed” Birmingham handing us our backsides 1-5 in 2007, or the penalty shootout defeat of Ossie’s bairns to ‘arry’s Bournemouth in ‘91. Mind you, without cup replays we would never have had Trelford Mills to hate and then our lives would have been much the poorer.

At its best, sport is not just a collection of random moments, not one long highlights package. It’s a narrative that draws us in, a story in which we’re invested, an outcome that matters to us. Cup replays extend and deepen that story.

And that’s why a largely forgotten own goal, a couple of hundred miles away, in one of the dourest, most forgettable matches you’ll ever encounter broke a teenage heart.

So long replays. You’ll be missed.

Matthew Philpotts