The FA Cup Second Round, Part 2 - The Rub of the Forest Green

For The FA Cup Second Round, Part 1 - The Madness of Crowds click here.

Changing our position on the terrace took longer than I had realised. By the time we were settled again the match had been underway for several minutes. Luckily, the first few minutes were uneventful. I considered this good news - anytime City square up against full-time opposition from a higher league it is easy to imagine them getting hit hard from the opening whistle. If anything, though, Forest Green Rovers seemed rather ordinary. After ten minutes Adam Connolly used some fancy footwork to position himself for an encouraging shot from twenty yards out. It went wide, but it signalled a shift in the balance of play. City began to push FGR hard.

From my position on the Popular Side terrace I began to relax a bit. I was still singing, shouting and whooping, but the modest sense of terror that had accompanied previous Cup matches was absent. This was not because I was feeling confident City would win. I think it was actually a sort of excitement overload. This was the fifth match in Bath City's cup run this year. All of the matches had been entertaining, but nonetheless stressful. Each round had been preceded by an ulcer-inducing amount of worry about the result, and followed by an equally fraught session of trying to anticipate the draw for the next round. The Grimsby Town match had been so utterly fantastic that for the following week that normal life seemed dull and lifeless in comparison. Now I was watching my heroes take on Forest Green Rovers in a match that would give the winner a chance to play Arsenal or Manchester United in the next round. By all rights I should have been excited enough to lose substantial motor function or cognitive ability. Instead I found myself feeling relatively peaceful as I watched City's impressive midfield shut Forest Green's attack down. The only explanation I can think of for this is the mental tension must have reached a critical point and my brain shut down all unnecessary emotions. Something like that. I'm sure there is some sort of medical expert out there who will back me up on this one.

This turned out to be a fortunate phenomenon. Without it I might not have survived the next few minutes. Just before the half hour, Forest Green scored with a massive dose of luck. Their midfielder, Jonathan Smith, took a hopeful shot from twenty-five yards out. City keeper Ryan Robinson had adequate time to position himself well. He stood with his normal confident pose, waiting to catch the ball to his chest. Instead, the ball glanced ever so slightly off of City defender Chris Holland. The deflection caused the ball to go into the net about four feet to the right of where Robinson was expecting it. He tried to shift at the last moment but he was not balanced properly to shift in that direction. Against the run of play (and I mean really against the run of play) FGR had the lead.

This was a gut-wrenching moment. Not only was City trailing for the first time in their FA Cup run, but it was an undeserved goal. If my synapses had been functioning properly I'm not sure how I would have coped. Instead I decided to wait for what I thought would be City's inevitable equaliser.

My assumption that City would equalise may not have been entirely the result of a faulty thinking process. City have shown a resolve to win from behind this season that has been breathtaking to watch. What's more, they clearly had the measure of their full-time opponents. Chances were being created left, right and centre (literally), and it stood to reason that eventually someone would have the wherewithal to put one in the net. Fifteen minutes later this appeared to happen. Lewis Hogg lobbed a perfect cross to the outstretched foot of Kaid Mohamed. Mohamed was in front of an open goal. Unfortunately, Mohamed's foot was a bit too outstretched because he only managed to flick the ball over the crossbar.

A few minutes before the half my friend Dave turned to me and said, 'City are about to score. You can sense it.' Dave sensed right. Sekani Simpson collected the ball thirty yards out from goal and launched a long diagonal cross. Lewis Hogg stepped forward, unmarked, and headed it neatly into goal. The three thousand City fans crammed into the various pockets of Twerton Park went wild. It was a fantastic goal, - executed with skill and at lightning speed. I picked up Big Nedved Junior and we danced about. Surely City were on their way to victory.

Despite the fact that this goal had been on the verge of happening for most of the match, the FGR players were really shaken when they lost their lead. They had been struggling to clear the ball from their half all evening, but for the last few minutes of the half they struggled to even clear it from their penalty area. The City players passed the ball around like playground bullies, but never found the angle or position they required. This was the moment when Forest Green were vulnerable. They were almost asking to be finished off. City's finishing skills, already suffering, deserted them. The best this run of play produced was a mistimed shot by Sido Jombati right at FGR keeper, Terry Burton.

At the time I was not worried. I remarked to Dave that with all the chances City was getting, and with Forest Green only scoring through blind luck, I was sure City would win the day. Being English, and a more experienced football supporter, Dave counselled caution. You never can tell, he said.

Big Nedved Junior wanted to get some chips at halftime. The snack bar was on the other side of the ground from where we were. Normally this is not a problem, but it was clear that getting there and back in the halftime interval was impossible. The queue was probably outrageously long as well, but the solid mass of humanity around the snack bar made it impossible to tell where the queue began and the other spectators ended. We could have gone to the tea bar (much closer by), but the thousand or so people packed around it made me think we wouldn't have any luck there either. I consoled Big Nedved Junior with a description of the sandwich and crisps that awaited him in the car for the ride home. He was not impressed.

The second half began as the first had finished. City tried to take the lead as energetically as they had equalised. FGR only managed faltering attacks on the break.

One break did lead to a corner kick for Forest Green. It was the first corner City had conceded in the match. The City crowd was silent, briefly, as Conal Platt launched a kick that was too short to reach the main mass of FGR players. It was not too short to reach Mark Preece, though. He reached the ball with his head pointed down. Robinson got a hand to it, but Preece had managed to strike the ball sharply. Forest Green had another goal. Another goal against the run of play.

Big Nedved Junior tugged on my arm. 'I'm hungry,' he said again. Suddenly, the idea of queueing up for the tea bar didn't seem so bad. A welcome distraction, in fact. I agreed to take him to the tea bar. It was only five minutes before we returned with a Mars bar, it turned out. The jam-packed crowd had managed to somehow spontaneously clear the designated walkways. The queue from half-time, much reduced, was allowed enough room to function adequately. How utterly British.

After FGR's second goal City did lose their momentum for fifteen minutes or so. Forest Green were not dominant either. Other than a few runs at the City goal the game mostly consisted of intercepted passes in midfield. At the hour mark Sido Jombati was replaced by Florin Pelecaci, another crowd favourite, and the game reverted to its previous pattern: City controlling the game but unable to convert the control into goals.

The last thirty minutes of the match passed in a blur. I was riveted by what I was watching, but I somehow managed to remain hopeful City would win and resigned to a City loss at the same time. The crowd was fantastic. The singing never stopped. If you were judging a match on sound alone you would have figured City were the ones with the 2-1 lead. The FGR fans, segregated on the Bristol end, were watching their team grind out a victory, but they got quieter with each passing minute.

I had a gut feeling, or rather a firm desire, that Pelecaci would score an equaliser. Despite exuding quality with every touch, he had not seen much playing time recently. I figured he was due for a goal. While I waited, he shocked me with one of the best headers I've seen at a live match. Most of the headers in non-league football are opportunistic and uncalculated. Unless they are in front of a goal, they tend to be aimed no more subtlety than 'forward.' Playing on the right, Pelecaci positioned himself to meet a cross coming from the center. He leaped up (and yes, it was like a salmon), flexed his neck with a full 180 degree motion, and manged to play the ball downwards at the feet of a passing City player twenty feet forward and to the left. It was stunning.

Pelecaci did not score an equaliser, but he did have City's best chance. He was unmarked on the right when Hogg found him with a cross. For perhaps the only time in the match, a City player struck too early rather than waited too long. The ball went into the side netting.

Right after this moment Big Nedved Junior tugged at my arm again. 'I've lost a tooth,' he said.

He had. The right mandibular canine, to be exact. He smiled. There was a streak of blood across his cheek and a look of real pride in his eight-year-old face.

'Let me see it,' I said.

'I can't. I've lost it. It fell on the ground here,' he explained.

This was a real dilemma. My beloved Bath City were fighting valiantly to avoid elimination from the FA Cup, but my son's tooth was somewhere on the terrace around us. I knew if we waited for the match to finish we'd never find it. The stampede for the exits would overwhelm us. I'm pleased to say that I did not hesitate. I got down on my knees with Big Nedved Junior and we hunted for his tooth.

You might not know this, but football terraces are covered with all sorts of pointy, white pebbles that can appear like teeth in bad lighting conditions. I found a dozen or more objects that appeared to be the missing mandibular canine at first glance. I'm sure we got some strange looks from our fellow spectators as we ran our hands over every square inch of exposed concrete in a four foot diameter. 'Anyone seen a tooth?' I asked, but I didn't get any answers.

Everyone was, understandably, totally focused on the match. I could have said, 'Anyone seen a gold ingot?' or 'Anyone seen a large, deadly chunk of uranium?' and gotten the same reaction. City were throwing more and more players forward, and FGR made several decent attempts to go two goals ahead on the break. I stole momentary glances at the pitch when I stood up to stretch my back. There was no sign of any tooth. I mentally began to prepare a speech about how the fact that the tooth had come out was much more important than the actual tooth itself.

And then I saw it. It was one step below us in a place I'm sure I had checked half a dozen times previously. I showed it to Big Nedved Junior who scooped it up and tried to see if it would go back into its hole. I got it back off of him as soon as I could. I was convinced he would swallow it or lose it again if he kept that up.

Tucked securely in my pocket, we forgot the tooth and stood up to watch the last few moments of play. I'm sure the ref blew the whistle at the right time, but it sounded unfairly early to my ears. Despite their disappointment and nascent grief, the crowd cheered the City players. Most of them, with frustration and disappointment clearly showing on their faces, raised their hands to clap for the City supporters. It was more than the normal gesture at the end of most matches. I got the feeling that several players wanted to thank each and every person at the ground.

Dave, Big Nedved Junior and I began to walk through the Bath end to exit the ground (amazingly, we found Mark just as we started moving. He had been only a few yards away the whole time). Being knocked out of the FA Cup at any stage is horrible. Knowing that your team really should have won was a bitter pill to swallow. The loss of prize-money and publicity hurts too. As we shuffled past the hoardings, though, I realised what the biggest disappointment was for me. Drawing a Premiership side in the third round would have meant getting to see City square up against one of the best teams in the world. I desperately want to see that. City players are not famous. Once they are a hundred yards from Twerton Park they can walk down the street in total anonymity. To me, and to hundreds of others, however, they are heroes. Not just because of the shirt they wear, but because of the heart they have shown this season while wearing it. I really wanted to see Lewis Hogg tear up Manchester United's back four. I wanted to see Sido Jombati wrap his legs around Cesc Fabregas and come away with the ball. I wanted to see Chris Holland intimidate Jermaine Defoe. I wanted to see Florin Pelecaci land a perfect somersault goal-celebration on the turf at Stamford Bridge. It's not going to happen this year, but I am convinced that with a bit more luck against Forest Green Rovers, it might have.