As mentioned earlier, the women’s trophy resides currently in the Blue
half of Manchester, at the City Academy Stadium.
The 7,000 Capacity Academy Stadium is located directly next to
Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium and it will be the starting point for our
journey. At this current moment, the FA Cup belongs to Manchester City women’s
team (and men’s team). This is where the Cup sleeps and therefore our opening
encounter will be the closest game to its current resting place.
The history of Manchester is vast and far too complicated for this blog,
so I’ll just mention a few things!
Industry, Textiles, Canals (including a big one that ships go down),
Coronation Street, Cracker (showing me age), The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The
Happy Mondays, Oasis (this list could go on and once again, showing my age) and
of course two massive football teams in Manchester City and Manchester United.
Manchester City Women’s team were founded in 1988 and they won the
Women’s Super League in 2016. Other honours include 3 League Cups (2014, 2016
and 2019) and of course 2 FA Cups (2017 and 2019). England Lionesses captain
Steph Houghton is their solid figure at the back and new addition Ellen White
(of 2019 World Cup fame due to her Bronze Boot and glasses celebration) will
surely score more goals for them up front… However, we are not here to talk
about Manchester City Women (yet), because we are here to see which opening FA
cup game is the closet to Manchester.
Drum roll please…
The Extra Preliminary Round has 20 teams and the closet tie to the
current home of the FA cup is draw number 3. Mossley Hill V Burnley Belvedere.
V
This game is in Liverpool and it is 36.4 miles from the FA Cup’s current
home. Join me later for more information
on both teams… and the unbelievably difficult task of trying to figure out
which level in the football pyramid they are from.
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