FA Cup third round day has long been typecast as a ‘big’ Saturday in the football calendar, the day when the ‘big boys’ join the minnows in the ‘world’s greatest cup competition.   And in recent years, there has been a tendency to try too hard to talk up the importance and, yes, the magic of the FA Cup.   Last weekend, Saturday especially, was hard work. There wasn’t a sniff of a shock in sight – as ITV’s Matt Smith said, Championship strugglers Reading holding the current Liverpool side was hardly a shock.

The more you saw of Hereford beating Newcastle, the more painful was the contrast. And when West Ham manager Gianfranco Zola leapt about after his side took the lead against Arsenal, it was to a chorus of “who says the Cup doesn’t matter?” from pundits everywhere.

Of course, these pundits said much of the “doesn’t matter” stuff in the first place. But the FA Cup itself hasn’t changed, everything else has.

“The Cup is nice but the league is what matters,” was always the mantra. And these were days of four European places in total and only two relegated sides - when relegation just meant you’d had a bad season, rather than potential financial meltdown.

So, the FA Cup has got less important for many. But not for the lower league sides, for whom the Third Round proper is a shot at glory and life-changing finance. Nor for the non-league game, for whom the First Round proper is the same.

And what other competition in the world can offer Kettering fans the chance to say, with only one degree of separation, having drawn at home to Leeds in the second round, “we’re better than Manchester United.”?

The magic of the FA Cup still exists. And you don’t have far to look.