Two teams from different worlds collided to remind us why we love the FA Cup so much, writes OLIVER HOLT as Premier League Spurs need extra-time to beat part-time Tamworth
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There was a problem before kick-off. It was the kind of problem that anybody who has played Sunday league football in this country at any level, on a cold day on a bobbly pitch, perhaps, when players may be hungover from the night before, perhaps, when no one could find the keys to the changing rooms, perhaps, would have recognised.
![[Ninety-six places separated the two sides but Tamworth took Spurs all the way to extra time]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/12/17/94013171-0-image-a-2_1736704562522.jpg)
The problem was with the net. There was a knot that had come loose and when the linesman spotted it, the kick-off was delayed. ‘That was when I got the shout from Haydn,’ Beck-Ray Enoru said afterwards of his centre-half teammate. ‘He told me to come and jump on his back.’.
![[Tottenham's substitutions were designed to deal damage - and mocked by Tamworth's fans - but proved effectual in the end]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/12/17/94013121-0-image-a-3_1736704670670.jpg)
And so Enoru climbed on the back of Haydn Hollis in front of the 4,000 supporters crammed into the ramshackle stadium, millions watching on television and a bemused team of Spurs internationals jogging up and down to try to keep warm, and dangled off the crossbar and fixed the knot and then jumped down and ran to the half way line.
![[Spurs distinguished themselves in their humility and the time they had for the non-league side]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/12/17/94013085-0-image-a-4_1736704721128.jpg)
Sixty seconds later, Enoru, who works as a salesman at the Zara store in Leicester and was probably the best player on the pitch, had drifted past Radu Dragusin, skinned Pedro Porro and brought a fine save out of new Spurs goalkeeping hero Antonin Kinsky.
![[We must protect the FA Cup at all costs because it can uplift clubs and a community]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/12/18/94013089-14276203-image-a-5_1736704803345.jpg)
And everybody remembered all over again just why it is that they love the FA Cup so much and why any more of the step-by-step betrayals of it by the governing body and the Premier League should be resisted at all costs. Tamworth, who sit 96 places below Tottenham in England’s football pyramid and languish in 16th in the fifth tier National League, were the better team in the first half and much of the second half and deserved to take the tie into extra time.
![[Tamworth boss Andy Peaks left his job as a learning support teacher ahead of this because the money generated from their FA Cup run gave them the funds to appoint him full-time]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/12/18/94013167-14276203-image-a-8_1736704999963.jpg)
