SUCH is romance. It can all go so well for so long, then suddenly, brutally, you get dumped. Tamworth were within ten minutes of knocking out Stoke City last night but conceded an equaliser, then lost on penalties. They were the better team in extra time, but cruel outcomes such as this are the flip side of the FA Cup’s charms.
During the shoot-out, Eddie Anaclet’s miss was cancelled out by Scott Bevan’s save from Kevin Harper, of Stoke, but Michael Touhy failed to convert. Not that Mark Cooper, the Tamworth player-manager, was watching. “Superstitious, I guess,” he said. Before the spot-kicks, he went into his office and switched on the television.
“I turned it up as loud as I could, got a beer out and thought, whatever will be, will be,” Cooper said. “The programme was something on Five. It was crap, whatever it was.” He knew that the Coca-Cola Championship side had secured a fourth-round tie against Walsall when his 8-year-old son, Charlie, ran in “in absolute bits, bawling his eyes out”.
Cooper also missed a surreal moment early in the shoot-out when Jan de Koning, the Stoke assistant manager, ran up to drag Carl Hoefkens, the defender, back to the halfway line just before he was about to take his penalty. De Koning said that Hoefkens was slightly injured and so had been scratched from Stoke’s list of takers at the last, but he was fit enough to put away the decisive penalty a couple of minutes later.
No less odd was a brief stoppage early in the first half when a mouse ran on to the pitch. Anaclet picked it up and lobbed it back over the touchline. Perhaps the rodent was roaming in search of more room, because the ground was crammed to capacity.
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Tamworth, struggling in the Nationwide Conference, made their nickname, the Lambs, look utterly inappropriate with a performance that was anything but meek. “I thought we were going to hang on in normal time,” Cooper said. “I was just bothered about putting on a show and I thought we did that by giving it a real go. But it’s a cruel, cruel way to go out.” Rightly, he was vastly proud of his part-time squad, many of whom had been at work earlier in the day and only practised penalties at 5pm.
“I’ve just told their manager he can be proud of his team,” De Koning said. “We are very relieved, especially as the team made it very difficult for themselves by not scoring one or two before half-time. But I always had the feeling we would score a goal because in the second half we also had good opportunity.”
The commemorative foam hands were out in force among the home support and there was some finger-pointing to be done in the unsalubrious cabin that is the away dressing-room at The Lamb during the half-time break.
Though the home side found chances hard to come by, they pierced Stoke’s defence in the 42nd minute. Carl Heggs charged down Michael Duberry’s clearance, possibly with a hand, and found himself clean through. He unselfishly squared to Nathan Jackson, a 19-year-old who until recently played his football in the Banks’s Brewery League, and he opened the scoring.
Tamworth felt aggrieved that they were not selected for live television coverage, especially after disposing of League One opposition in Hartlepool United and Bournemouth in previous rounds. Even Cooper might have watched. This match was compelling enough to suggest that they had a case, though it was a predictably ungainly battle, evened up by Stoke performing as tepidly as Tamworth were red hot.
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After Jackson’s easy finish, Stoke had a problem, because Tamworth’s ground is a strangely awkward venue. Neat and well-kept, like an Oompa Loompa it is tiny yet oddly intimidating. But despite persistent rain in the past few days, the pitch was not exactly sticky like chocolate. It was in a reasonable state, which, to judge from his pre-match comments, may have come as a disappointment to Cooper, but it allowed his men, who ought to have been exhausted, to put together some elegant moves, especially in extra time.
Inevitably, Stoke were more urgent in the second half of normal time and Marlon Broomes crashed a low shot against the post. The occasion was becoming more nightmarish for them with each passing minute until one 17-year-old experienced a dream debut.
With ten minutes left, Adam Rooney — no relation — headed across goal with his first touch after coming on as a substitute and Gallagher scored with an overhead kick from close range to send the game into extra time and enable Stoke’s ultimate escape. But in this tale of mouse and men, there was no doubt which side was the squeakier.
TAMWORTH (4-3-3): S Bevan — M Touhy, M Redmile, A Smith, E Anaclet — D Bampton, S Melton (sub: K Storer, 83min), G Ward — N Wright (sub: J Turner, 66), C Heggs, N Jackson. Substitutes not used: S Stamps, M Cooper, M Gayle. Booked: Heggs, Smith.
STOKE CITY (4-4-2): S Simonsen — M Broomes (sub: A Rooney, 80), C Hoefkens, M Duberry, L Buxton — L Chadwick (sub: Junior, 46), K Henry, D Brammer (sub: P Kopteff, 46), P Gallagher — M Sidibe, K Harper. Substitutes not used: P Sweeney, R Duggan. Booked: Harper, Junior.
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Referee: P Joslin.