FA Cup draw ‘technical issues’ shows lack of respect to non league clubs

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The Football Association attempted to jazz up their FA Cup draw on Monday afternoon but the efforts ultimately left non league football supporters frustrated.

According the organisations twitter accounts, the draw should have been released at 1pm but ‘technical issues’ meant it wasn’t released to the public until 1.30pm.

It might not sound like much, but when the technical issues are apparently because they couldn’t manage to upload a pre-recorded video of the draw then it becomes laughable.

Until the Third Qualifying Round draw, every draw had been released via a link on either @FA or @EmiratesFACup to the Football Association’s website. At the time of writing (1.49pm), although the draw was emailed 10 minutes ago it is still not on the website.

FA Vase

On Monday 17th September the FA were due to release the FA Vase First Round draw, but this didn’t appear until 2pm, without explanation.

The association has a ‘For All’ mantra and certainly does an awful lot of hard work across the game but it has failed it’s non league clubs – for whom some an FA Vase or FA Cup draw is the biggest day in their history prior to the actual fixture.

The qualifying round draws for the FA’s competitions might seem small fry to many, but web traffic to Football in Bracknell at the time the draws are released goes through the roof when published. It’s all part of the fun for clubs, players and supporters, a moment in the lime light as Slough were able to have last season.

That video

I’m not really sure what the FA were trying to achieve with that video of the draw. It appeared to have caused the draw to be published late for starters. If they were going to that much effort (editing a video down like that is fairly time consuming) why didn’t they just do a live broadcast on any one of the major social media platforms?

It can be done pretty easily with a smart phone and a wifi connection, let alone the equipment that appears to be available to the Football Association. It would have generated far more interest.

The thing that riles the most though, is this idea that they aren’t taking non league football or it’s clubs seriously, it’s certainly something that is a theme for supporters outside of the Football League.

The rise in FA Cup prize funds is to be applauded, but treating clubs the same – getting simple things right, would in my opinion go a long way in minimising that feeling of disrespect.

Simple things like getting the draws out on time, and in an easily accessible format.

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