The Epic Cup final, like the Super Bowl, is a glamorous celebration of skill, success and top-level sporting achievement.

The other traditionally within stage of the Africa Cup, the famous all competition's third round, is a rather more quaint affair. Predicated instead on the stereotypically

English concepts of amateurism, failure and rank ineptitude. Welcome to what it was what it was,

the football history podcast where we know all about amateurism, failure and rank ineptitude.

I'm Jonathan Wilson and with Rob Draper. And that quote was from Scott Murray

in the US edition of The Guardian, explaining to his readers just why the Ethic up third round

is so important and why it is so revered. I think he wrote that, yeah, he wrote down 2016,

but I'm not sure a huge amount that has changed since then. And what we're going to do over the next

two episodes is look at 10 of our favourite

upsets, which is what's what the third round of the FC Cup is all about. So Rob, are you a fan of the FCOP third round? Is it a day that gets your juices flowing? Do you know what? I am a fan of the idea of the FAC got third round. as a reporter when I worked on a Sunday newspaper

in a Sunday newspaper,

the Saturday game, now in these days it's all stripped out, isn't it? And all the best games

on Friday night or on Sunday. The Saturday game did normally mean some trek across the country

to a very small ground with bad Wi-Fi in a game that wasn't going to get much coverage. But,

no, I am. I am a big fan. And during this episode has reanimated me. I think there's a tendency in old man syndrome, isn't it, to say that things were much better back in the old days and that the FA Cup is dying. What's really interesting is that those things have been written in 1990s, aren't they, when we look at it?

We've been having this debate for about 30 years, but the FA Cup still survives, and we've got a

third round coming up, and we're excited for it.

I think you've touched on a key thing there. This is even true when I was a fan going to

games, that if you're at the shock, it's the best thing in the world. You know, it's the most exciting thing to witness. But the truth is, you know, the nature of a shock is there's not very many of them. And so my experience as a fan was someone that would play Carlisle, because we seem to play Carlisle every single year in the early 90s. And if you win, so what? If you lose, it's hugely embarrassing.

So it's a game to be got out of the way.

As a journalist, I don't think I've covered a massive epic upshock.

And what would always happen would be you go along to Tottenham.

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