Why the FA Cup, and not the Premier League, is English football's prized jewel - and how it's refusing to die thanks to underdogs like Plymouth, writes OLIVER HOLT I felt lucky to be at Home Park on Sunday.
The FA Cup is still a showcase for the best that our game has to offer and yet the FA itself is betraying it by degrees and the Premier League, which sees threats to its greed everywhere, is trying to kill it.
Sure, Liverpool played a second team at Plymouth so the giant-killing wasn't quite the same as it was in the days when Hereford beat Newcastle United and Wimbledon held a Leeds United team that featured Peter Lorimer, Billy Bremner, Jonny Giles, Paul Madeley and the rest of Don Revie's first choice selection.
He picked a second team for the FA Cup because Liverpool have five matches in the next 15 days and they have bigger priorities.
There was still something about the occasion that got to the kernel of the appeal of the cup: that ordinary players from lower league clubs with uplifting stories and lives that seem almost like yours and mine can fight with the gilded elite and sometimes, they can come out on top.
