The Cup Runs Over

New TV series starts this week called "The Cup". The trailers look good, maybe having a manager with a Scottish accent who throws tea cups strikes a chord. But it's with a team of u-11's so it's comedy. It was filmed up here in the North, and where would this country be without the North - well pretty dull actually. I think some of the ground scenes are at one of Atherton clubs who play in the NW Counties League.

The Cup is on BBC 2 Tv 2130h BST (2030 UTC) - details and trailer.

In the real world the FA Cup started, and some of the few readers of this weblog will know I follow it from the start in August. ITV showed a game on the web on Friday. It had a 1820h kick-off at Wantage Town. Possibly no floodlights, or maybe they wanted to save electricity. Picture quality very good but the screen size was no bigger than half a postcard. As the games are videoed by the various ITV companies there is nobody working at weekend to edit the highlights of the dozen other matches. So they turn up on Monday in dribs and drabs. But a very good effort so far. Well apart from the results service. I tried to find out how Sunderland Nissan went on - just like the idea of a Japanese car factory as part of your club name . BBC, ITV, and The FA had nothing doing. But the old media, a copy of NonLeaguePaper from the Esso garage on Sunday morning did the job. I don't know how many copies they sell but they deserve a medal for old school reporting. Proper match reports, full results and breadth of national coverage - banging it all out for the Sunday morning newsstands.