To go to sudden death seems a travesty of tradition.Yet so big is the Premiership, so desperate the need for clubs to win it, or stay in it, the FA Cup does seem to have been devalued. Does it mean the same to clubs as it used to?"Oh yes," Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager, said. "Everybody wants to get to Wembley, it's the highlight of the year I don't see why you shouldn't have a replay We used to have one replay after the other. If one team is good enough to go away and get a draw, they are entitled to a replay.
It would be farcical to have penalties."Not that Redknapp was pleased to get a replay on Saturday. In more than 30 years in the game he has never got beyond the fifth round, but he has rarely had a better chance. "We were 2-1 up against 10 men - we should have won from there," he admitted.That they did not was due to some stirring play from Rovers and thoughtful half-time work from their manager, Roy Hodgson, making his fifth-round bow. Hodgson had to calm a Rovers side whose composure disappeared along with their early lead after Gallacher's dismissal.
He went for allegedly elbowing Eyal Berkovitch, West Ham's Israeli midfielder, who had already earned Rovers' ire for his response to two challenges from Billy McKinlay.With the benefit of video evidence, which the generally admirable Peter Jones did not have, Berkovitch did appear to make a meal of the first McKinlay tackle and dive over the second. The evidence on the dismissal is inconclusive and, although the referee was close by, his view seemed obscured by Steve Lomas. Gallacher made contact with an arm, but it did not appear to be an intentional elbow, nor did it seem to justify Berkovitch's dying swan routine.The game has certainly changed since Peter McParland's assault on Ray Wood in the Aston Villa-Manchester United final of 1957. McParland's bodycheck, six minutes into the game and several seconds after Wood had taken possession, knocked the goalkeeper out and fractured his cheekbone. United, reduced to 10 men with Jackie Blanchflower in goal, lost 2-1. McParland scored both goals and, far from being vilified, was described, by the former goalkeeper Frank Swift, in the following day's press, as the hero of the hour.There is no place for violent play in the game, but so skilled are the divers that the pendulum sometimes swings too far.
