Cup Kafkaesque

Bath City were ejected from the Somerset Premier Cup tonight by Southern League side Bridgwater Town. It was not a narrow loss either. Bridgwater won a convincing 3-0 victory. It was the sort of defeat that could really shake a team right before a crucial FA Cup match on Saturday. It was the sort of defeat that might bring pressure on a manager to resign or cause fans to tear up their season tickets in disgust -- except it wasn't because this was the Somerset Premier Cup. Being ejected from the competition in the first round without picking up any significant injuries is probably the best result City could have hoped for. Really??! What the heck is going on?

The idea that there are multiple trophies at stake in a single season took a while for my American brain to adjust to. Most American sports have only a single championship. European sports leagues usually have several, meaning it is possible for a team to have an average season in the main league competition but still come away with some other title that supporters can point to with pride. Sometimes, though, the extra competitions are just a distraction, and are best dispensed with at the first opportunity. The Somerset Premier Cup is just such a competition.

In the fifty-one times the Cup has been contested, Bath City have won it eighteen times. That's more times than any other Somerset club. That's more times than League 1 rivals Yoeville Town. No one cares. Absolutely no one. There are no 'Somerset Premier Cup Winners' tee shirts printed. No commemorative mugs. The final I went to one year didn't even have a program printed.

Advancing in the cup brings precious little reward. There is no prize money if you win. There is no prestige if you win. There is nothing at all really if you win other than a share of the pitifully small gates (which even then you have to split three ways between the two teams and the Somerset FA). No clubs field their first-choice team until, perhaps, the final (and that's only if the final occurs after the regular season has concluded). It is a woeful excuse for a tournament and no one would mourn its loss if it was allowed to wither away.

This begs the question: why play the Somerset Premier Cup at all? I ask this question regularly whenever I can find someone who looks likely to answer it. The answer is always thus: we have no choice. The Somerset FA have the authority to force all clubs registered in Somerset to play. If they did not have this power, no one would bother. What's worse, Somerset Premier Cup matches take priority over league matches, so if you find yourself so unfortunate as to advance into the later rounds you can have important league fixtures postponed to play Frome Town (as City found to its disadvantage last year). The competition is nothing more than a nuisance imposed from above by a faceless bureaucracy. Faceless bureaucrats, who I have been told repeatedly, are 'old men who wear blue blazers.' What is the source of their power and why are they allowed to keep it? So far no one I have approached can answer this.

I can't tell you much about them yet, but I can tell you that the Somerset FA do have a penchant for second-rate corporate waffle. In the otherwise excellent program for tonight's match you can read the mission of the Somerset FA:

"To Provide opportunities for everyone to fall in love with the game.

Equality For All

Strive for Achievement"

There are some curious uses of tense and capitalisation in this, but a distinct lack of meaningful content. And I have yet to attend a Somerset Premier Cup match that would cause anyone to 'fall in love with the game.' Attending them is more like a grubby one-night stand than a love affair. Afterwards you wonder if you really should have.

This whole setup reminds me of Franz Kafka's unfinished novel, the Castle. In that book the hero, 'K,' is trying to navigate the impenetrable maze of regulations that govern his activities as a land surveyor. He knows that he needs some sort of permission from the administrators who reside in the castle above his village, but just what he needs and who he needs to see to get it is impossible to determine. No one in the village can help him and his only course of action is to try and arrange appointments with an administrator named 'Klam' who is always too busy to help. At no point in the book is K required to play meaningless football matches, but I think that is only because Kafka died before he could finish the book.

Like K, I have written a letter to the Somerset FA's own Klam, Chief Executive Jon Pike. I have included it below. If I get a response I will publish it in tomorrow's post (which will also include my account of tonight's match and my impressions of Bridgwater Town). Until then, be on the lookout for men in blue blazers!

Dear Mr Pike,

I have just returned this evening from watching Bath City lose to Bridgwater Town in the first round of the Somerset Premier Cup. I have a few questions for you if you don't mind. I am American and some of the traditions in British sports still confuse me.

Bath City lost and are therefore ejected from the tournament, but as far as I can tell tonight was the perfect outcome for City. No further injuries were picked up by the already injury-depleted squad. Now Bath City are free to concentrate on important contests like the league, the FA Cup and the FA Trophy. There will be no inconvenient mid-week matches away to Minehead. Winning would have just heaped bother and inconvenience, at best, onto what an already challenging situation for the club.

I do not speak for anyone other than myself, mind you. I'm just a supporter.

I know that most City supporters feel the same as I do, though, that the Somerset Premier Cup is just a waste of time and a chance to pick up injuries in a pointless competition. I met several Bridgwater supporters who were equally eager for their club to lose. It is decidedly odd to hold a competition that no one wants to win.

My question is, why have it at all? What is the purpose of the cup? In what way is it not a burden to clubs already struggling with a difficult economic climate? If you abolished it, would anyone complain?

People tell me the competition persists only because of 'old men in blue blazers' who have the authority to make it continue and to force clubs to play in it. Is that true? It sounds kind of spooky.

I find the whole thing perplexing. Please help.

Yours truly,

Nedved