A fan's-eye view from Ewood Park, with Phil Lloyd

THE romance of the Third Round of the FA Cup, eh? Well it was in short supply at Ewood last Saturday.

I'm not knocking a 2-0 win gained with 10 "regulars" missing, extending our unbeaten run under the new manager. Nor am I complaining about a low and low-key crowd, 30 per cent less than would go along for a Premiership fixture.

After all, as somebody said, 16,000 is a pretty good turn out to watch the reserves!

If I use that old footballing cliche "with due respect to Charlton", you'll know I'm about to insult them.

But, with due respect to Charlton, it just wasn't a fixture to set the pulse racing. The 'Addicks' exalted current status means they are hardly "Cup minnows" - in fact they last won the Cup (now who was that against, I wonder?) more recently than Rovers.

They brought 500 or so fans, enough to make it worth our while opening the Darwen End, but not enough to provide any kind of Cup-tie atmosphere.

But look around and this is not a unique phenomenon. Compared with the numbers that attend their League matches, low crowds were in evidence at Sheffield United, Southampton and Forest too.

And surprise, surprise, the other common denominator for these games was a dodgy performance and result for the home side against "lesser" opposition.

What's the conclusion? I have felt for a few years that the magic, romance, excitement, call it what you will, of the FA Cup is increasingly a figment of the media's imagination.

With occasional exceptions like Rushden & Diamonds, the Cup only gets seriously interesting, or even relevant, from the Fifth Round onwards.

If the Cup winners don't get a European place in future, I shudder to think what sort of teams will take the field to represent Rovers - or what sort of a crowd will go along to watch.

I hope Mr. Kidd takes Sunderland more seriously than he did Charlton - firstly because we will need to if we are to win, and secondly because I'm keeping May 22nd free in my diary. Just in case!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.