We are the famous Morecambe and we're going to Villa Park' might not have quite the same ring to it as the traditional Wembley chants, but that won't dampen the enthusiasm of Christie Park crowd for their forthcoming FA Trophy semi-final.

Forget Ipswich, this game is he biggest event at Christie Park since the promotion season of 1995.

This is a chance for serious, nationally respected silverware to reach the Christie Park trophy cabinet for the first time since the days of sideburns and glam rock.

Morecambe have established themselves as a ' consistent' conference side for around five or six years now, and there seems to be a general feeling that it is time to take another step forward.

Finishing among the top half dozen clubs outside the league is exhilarating the first time you do it, exciting the second, but after a few years it becomes the norm and doesn't adequately feed the soul of the football fan.

It's from situations like this that phrases such as 'If you don't go forward, you go backwards' arise.

I feel that is what happened to Morecambe last season.

Despite finishing third the year before, a title challenge still looked a long way away.

The talismanic Justin Jackson moved on and the momentum was lost, with the aforementioned FA Cup run the only new experience.

This season the club decided to bite the bullet and go for full time status for as many players as possible.

That can't have been an easy, or cheap decision to make, and the director's deserve a reward for their bravery.

If Morecambe reach the trophy final, it will be a mark of how well they have overcome the blip of 2000/2001 and an important step towards building a team which can challenge for the football league.

Stevenage Borough are a bit of an unknown quantity, having recently brought in a new manager.

The club seems to have splashed out good money on new player in the expectation of a promotion drive, only to see the new recruits disappoint.

And their proposed TV experiment has already been discussed enough on these pages.

On the whole, it is probably a better draw for the Shrimps than Burton Albion or Yeovil.

While I would fancy Morecambe's chances against either side in a one off game, a two-legged semi-final is always daunting, especially against teams who have developed a winning habit.

But, come the final, anything could happen and, with a bit of luck, it will.

Every sportsman has to make some kind of sacrifice to be the best, but some, it seems, are happy to go to almost Van Goghesque lengths.

Former world rally champion, Colin McRae, reportedly considered cutting his little finger off, not because he had joined the triads but because it was broken and struggling to recover.

Thankfully, McRae was able to escape the indignity of going through life with a digit missing, but it makes you wonder whether those golfers who say they would 'give their right arm for a decent short game' actually mean it!