Prosecco in trees and balls in back yards: Why Spurs’ trip to Marine is a
You probably haven’t heard of Marine Association Football Club before, so here’s a little bit about the team who just drew Premier League leaders Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup.
They’re from Merseyside, currently competing in the Northern Premier League Division One North West or, in other words, the eighth tier of English football.
Rossett Park, their home, has three sides and the other is a row of houses, each one with a number on their garden fence, so you know which door to knock on for the ball back.
We can already imagine Jose Mourinho banging on No.22 after Moussa Sissiko skies another one into their back yard.
“That was the worry,” Mariners boss Neil Young told talkSPORT. “Because we don’t use the FA Cup balls, we have to order them and the FA give us some.
“We were worried that we weren’t going to have any left because so many were going over the fences on Sunday!
“Our ground is a very tight ground in the middle of a lot of houses.
“People will be drinking prosecco from trees and branches; somebody will be having a roast dinner.
“To be honest, the touchline is very close to the houses. They talk to you through the fence… I’ve been offered a sausage sandwich.”
It’s what we call a proper FA Cup tie: the second-lowest ranked team ever to qualify for the third round, welcoming the country’s highest-ranked team and one of the world’s most famous managers.
In Crosby, though, it’s Young who is considered the special one, having engineered the seven victories Marine needed to get to this point.
The club, who are set to bank £250,000 from the tie, will be glad their manager came back to football two years ago after seemingly quitting forever in 2016.
“It’s just crazy. I started managing in Sunday League over 20 years ago, then in non-League with Chester and Stockport, and now I’m coming up against one of the world’s finest,” he added.
“It’s a fairytale.”
But nothing sums up the club’s humility better than goalkeeper Bayleigh Passant grabbing some beers from the Co-op in full kit after the 1-0 victory over Havant and Waterlooville on Sunday.
“I got back to watch Wolves vs Arsenal, then I got a phone call asking if I’d seen it,” Young said.
“On the front page of our local paper was Bayleigh walking out of the Co-op with a bag of beers. I just thought, ‘What is going…
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