I think it was January the 8th when it started. The latest it could have started actually.

They had glamorous ladies selling FA Cup brochures around the side of the pitch.

You basically got a wall chart included with this brochure and stickers with the badges of the clubs competing. You were to stick them on after every round.

There were just enough stickers for each team, including provision for a couple of replays.

Incredibly I nearly ran out of Albion stickers. We drew 1-1 with Newcastle at the dear old Goldstone that day. Of course that was it. Even though in those days Newcastle were a division below us. Honest they were. There was simply no way we would beat them at St James Park or whatever it’s called now.

I didn’t go to the replay on a Wednesday night in Newcastle. As a 14 year old it wasn’t allowed.

So on a wet January night in Hangleton, Hove, I was allowed to stay up later than normal to watch Harry Carpenter tell me, that my beloved Albion had gone out of the FA Cup again.

But he didn’t! I remember he said ''a game full of controversy from St James’ Park''. Then, they showed some other match and I fell asleep. I was told if I was going to sleep I may as well go to bed. It was getting on for eleven.

1983 - Sta Prest, Haircut One Hundred, and the latter stages of puberty. Proper cold winters, and the start of hard line Thatcherism. Am I setting the scene? No? Ok then, the Glass Animal Man up Queens Road. Four, count them, four platforms at Preston Park Station and the Clifford Edwards factory in Hove. The days when people lived in Brighton and Hove because their relatives and ancestors had. Who didn’t think the North Laines was ‘‘so bohemian’’ or Church Road ‘’so cosmopolitan’. They just lived in Brighton and Hove because they had been bought up there. It was just like any other slightly run down English Sea-side town.

The most famous thing about Brighton and Hove in those days was Brighton and Hove Albion.Oh and the occasional murder.

Anyway, Harry did then introduce the second game that Sports Night.Soon into the edited highlights Peter Ward scored for the Albion. His last ever Brighton goal I think. Not long after, Imrie Varadi equalized. The referee,was a man called Mills. Trelford Mills, and why this man hasn’t got a statue dedicated to him somewhere in Brighton and Hove is beyond me. Well, he disallowed Varadi’s goal. To this day no one knows why. Surely the bravest man in Tyne and Wear at that time.

Before the end of the match he became braver than the bravest man in Tyne and Wear. He disallowed a Kevin Keegan goal at the Gallowgate end. The camera’s homed in on Trelford as he waved away Geordie protests.He almost did a little dance to indicate he had spotted a push. We were all doing it the next day at Hove Park School. I can still gesticulate it now. Until recently Trelford Mills did after dinner speaking. I could listen to him for hours.

This was of course an FA Cup third round replay. We all know and still day dream about what happened afterward.

On Saturday, Manager less Albion take on Wycombe Wanderers in the 1st Round Proper. The Albion have struggled at this stage a few times. Kingstonian Canvey, AFC Sudbury!

You can’t beat a good cup run. A third round tie against a Premiership team or Palace would really boost a flagging season, especially at home. Can you imagine a full strength, nothing else to play for, Liverpool at Withdean. I can’t see too many superstars being rested. Arrested maybe.

Mr Coppell has turned down the hottest seat in football. It was obvious he’d declined when he wasn’t waving a ‘seagulls’ scarf outside the Grand Hotel by Wednesday afternoon.

Sacking Russell Slade and his assistants was in all probability necessary. Sacking them before having another Manager waiting in the wings was a little silly. Perhaps one more game would have kick started Russell’s season. The FA Cup has saved many a Manager’s job. Alex Ferguson and Mark Robin’s spring to mind.

Good luck to Martin Hinshelwood and the boys at Wycombe. Dear old Hinsh, always there to step into the breach.

That’s loyalty, when you are becoming caretaker Manager for the 4th time in 16 years.

Maybe we should erect a statue of Hinsh instead.