It was a holiday for us today, the government of Ontario deciding a few years ago that we need a mid-winter long weekend. And, voila, Family Day was born.
A good holiday Monday needs a good sleep in with no worry of getting up for work or readying kids for school. But if you can't sleep much past sunrise because your head is pounding and your throat crying out for liquids after a late night out, the perfect antidote is early morning football on TV in a quiet house. With the perfect timing of English football for Toronto on most Saturday mornings this would be a good possibility. But sadly not today. An FA Cup match in the middle of a workday to satisfy the early (hungover) risers in Canada would probably not be too popular in England.
So it became a lazy afternoon, 3pm start for Sutton United against Arsenal. After all the excitement over the weekend which I missed, I was determined to not miss this mother of all FA Cup shocks. I had memories of a Saturday afternoon many years ago, watching Wrexham of the old fourth division beating Arsenal and how surreal it was. Even though I saw Wrexham score two goals in the last 10 minutes to come back an win 2-1, I didn't believe it was actually happening, that it was even possible. Now, today, I wanted to see it happen again. Selfishly, I wanted to see my Lincoln moment.
Wish as much as I did, it was not going to happen. Arsenal did not look very good but Sutton were struggling to get out of there half and I just had that feeling that nothing special was going to happen. If I was sitting in a more comfortable chair I probably would have caught up on some much-needed sleep.
Arsenal scored a couple of goals, Sutton hit the crossbar and should have scored off a free header ("he's got to hit the target with that. He'll be disappointed") and in the end a plucky 2-0 defeat was the end of the lowest ranked team left in this year's cup.
(At the same time Aston Villa were losing 2-0 to Newcastle and I barely cared. There’s hardly any emotion left in that relationship, apart from anger as Villa sit 6 points off a relegation spot.)
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