THERE was something missing the weekend before last when we didn’t have a game, and it wasn’t the absence of a match, though undoubtedly we did all miss that.

No, the missing ingredient was hope. We lost hope at Whaddon Road a few weeks ago, hope that we might get through to the second round, the third round, get a big club at home in the fourth, beat them, go further, a hope, a distant one albeit, but a hope nonetheless that we might get to Wembley and so on.

It is this emotion, which, for me, characterises the world’s oldest knockout competition more than any other.

If you were to ask the fans of Accrington, Yeovil or AFC Wimbledon how felt after drawing two of the biggest clubs in the country in the next round, I’m sure they would express their excitement, anxiety but above all, hope.

The cup is founded on hope, the belief that your team could, just might, get a result against one of the “big boys” or, if not, knock out a lesser team and progress onwards with the tantalising possibility of that happening at the next stage of the competition.

“They Dared To Hope” runs the headline as if it were something that was an act of bravery on the part of the underdogs and their fans.

This overlooks the reality that hope is one of the emotions that motivated them to compete in the first place.

We don’t dare to hope, hope is what we have with us every time we climb the steps to our seat at the County Ground and it is no more present than when we hear the cup draw announced.

The FA Cup is also unique amongst European cup competitions in that allows ties to be settled over one leg, elsewhere you will find that rounds are always played over two legs thereby greatly increasing the odds of the bigger team triumphing.

However, a cup completion which seems to be based on fear – fear of the underdog, fear of being embarrassed by lowly opposition – rather than the prospect of the triumph of hope seems to be devoid of everything that sport means to me.

Conversations I have had with friends from southern and northern Europe all tell me that an FA Cup type one-leg arrangement would never happen in their countries, and they even went so far as to say the big clubs would never allow it; a clear indication, if one were needed, of the way in which the moneyed, vested interests in football try to stifle hope and buy and guarantee certainty and make success something which is only available to the few at the top.

It is those very same money boys at the top of our heap over here which have taken the shine off the cup over the last 20 years or so.

The FA and the big clubs here seem to be driven not by hope but the need to ‘protect their investments’ and the fear of losing their status and protected position whereby they try to play only each other and keep those less glamorous opponents locked out of the party.

Even though Swindon weren’t in the draw for the next round, I enjoyed watching it and I experienced that fundamental emotion of hope (vicariously at least) that runs through life and football.