Aidan Smith: Cup replays were usually gruelling, often agonising – and magic

What, too romantic? Romance is what you get at the Back Post, you should know that by now. And more and more I wonder if this page should be called Last Post.

It’s a big cup weekend in both Scotland and England. Down south, this season has just been confirmed as a collector’s item for traditionalists, nostalgists and loyal subjects of King Canute - the last to feature replays. We gave up on them some time ago.

The last Scottish Cup semi-final to go to a replay was in 2007. The last quarter-final to require a second game was in 2019. The last-ever replay came in 2021 in the third round, Darvel eventually overcoming Brechin City on penalties.

So we cannot display too much schadenfreude at English wailing at the axing of replays in the FA Cup and the anger being directed at – and I quote – the “selfish, whining billionaires” who rule the game there and the impotence shown by the cuckolded administrators in ceding to the pressure.

Because we love replays and wish we still had them, right? Well, I do. For Scots of a certain age, they were once a TV treat, a rare gift from the fun-reduction officers in charge of Scottish football and a window on a magical world.

Back in the day there was hardly any live football on our screens – it was deemed bad for us by John Knox, who’d risen from the grave to administer from the old Park Gardens HQ. If anything, his iron fist seemed to slam down harder than it ever did from his 16th century pulpit, at least if you were young and football-obsessed.

But in 1970, right after our cup final, not shown live, we got extra-time from Wembley where Chelsea and Leeds United were deadlocked at 2-2. Honestly, it was like the cathode ray tube had whooshed us up to heaven. For the first few minutes we couldn’t focus on the screen, such was the phantasmagorical exotica of real, as-it-happened football being piped into our parlours. Was that actually Eddie Gray traipsing across the cabbage patch? Yes it was.

And then we got to watch the replay. All of it. Words cannot convey what this meant to the Shoot! generation with the stars from our favourite mag – five Scots among them – springing to life and kicking the hell out of each other. And amid the Clockwork Orange-level ultra-violence there was a dream of an assist from Charlie Cooke – directly onto the head of the diving Peter Osgood and technically a cross but delivered from the middle of the muddy brown field – that I never tire of rerunning.

The following year’s FA Cup final granted us a further blessed 30 minutes of live football, that one settled by a much uglier goal involving two Scotsmen, George Graham and Eddie Kelly. No replay that time but we couldn’t wait for the next one and wholeheartedly applauded the concept.

Replays in domestic cup ties meant more football at a time when there was much less of it generally (smaller Euro competitions, fewer internationals, 16-team World Cups). Replays in earlier rounds swung home advantage to the team who’d been drawn away, and wasn’t that fair? Replays and the revenue accrued could, for a small club, be the difference between administration and finishing that modest new stand.

The world has changed, the World Cup has changed and the already drawn-out Champions League is about to get even more protracted, the group stages extending into January which is prime FA Cup time when the third and fourth rounds are played. But Uefa, and Fifa, don’t care about domestic cups, want them reduced to one per country and for top-flight leagues to be cut to 18 teams. France have already complied.

So money trumps history – what a complete non-surprise. Consider this, though: if there had been no replays in 1972 then Newcastle United, the home team, might have sorted themselves out against Hereford United in extra-time through their superior technique and fitness. Thus, one of the oldest football competition’s biggest shocks, arguably its best-ever goal, the moment which absolutely screams “History!” and definitely the greatest replay would never have happened.

A back-page headline on Friday read: “FA Cup war.” Good, I thought to myself, perhaps all the English clubs who don’t now view the competition as an inconvenience are joining forces to fight the cancelling of replays. Maybe that gluepot Hereford pitch should be the battlefield with everyone kitted out in parkas. But really, what chance would such resistance have? What the mega-elite want, they usually get. Not the European Super League, granted, but isn’t the engorged Champions League simply a version of that, sneaked through the back door?

Scotland gave up its replays without a whimper. The last replayed Scottish Cup final was way back in 1981. Two years before was the last twice-replayed final and I witnessed every one of its 330 minutes, ending in own-goal heartache for my team. Hibs fans were well-trained for such an outcome against Rangers; indeed well-trained for a tie in three gripping instalments following a fifth-round marathon with Motherwell in 1976. I was fed up of the sight of Willie Pettigrew after that; in fact, fed up of the sight of some Hibees, beaten again. Epic ties could seem like work. As the Knoxian mantra had it: “Work, amen, and mair work.” But I miss them.