Embrace the 3pm FA Cup final, it might make it feel a bit special again

If there’s one thing that this country loves, it’s tradition. It loves it more than progress, it loves it more than logic. There are times when it even seems to love it more than decency. The reasons as to why that is the case are probably too complex and multi-faceted to get into in a brief football opinion column on a Wednesday afternoon, but needless to say that an obsession with the past has a happy knack of distracting and stultifying in a way that mostly benefits those who wish we still lived in it. Now sit there like a good serf and enjoy your extra Bank Holiday and Coronation quiche; you’ll be back to six day work weeks and bowls of gruel soon enough.

Generally speaking, football manages to avoid the pettiest trappings of this voluntary retrogression. Sure, we are oft-subjected to the technophobic pantomime of VAR discourse, and every now and again a rogue pundit will spew forth a sentiment about the evils of excessive barbering or video game consumption, but for the most part, we’re pretty okay. The modern game skims along ever sleeker, ever more modish and streamlined, like a carbon fibre dolphin surfing the very crest of time’s surging tsunami.

And that, in a roundabout sort of way, brings us to the FA Cup. When it comes to the world’s oldest domestic club competition, opinion is divided. There are some who believe that it is a relic of a bygone era, a dusty has-been undeserving of any great affection or attention. Others will argue, all white knuckles and frothing spittle, that it is still an integral part of the fabric of everything that we should hold dear. In many respects, it is football’s answer to the Royal Family.

Chalk one up for the traditionalists, though, because it was announced earlier today that this year’s final will, for the first time in over a decade, kick-off at 3pm. Now, there was a time when that was the indellible norm. The day marking the culmination of the FA Cup was akin to a national holiday, with the country grinding to a halt as all eyes turned to Wembley. Television coverage began in the morning, and as the hours ticked down towards the first blast of the referee’s whistle, anticipation would reach a fever pitch.

As the years have rolled by, this excitement and orthodoxy has dissipated somewhat, and ever since the showpiece fixture was shunted to a later time slot - usually some point between 4.45pm and 5.30pm - it has felt like a bit of an afterthought, as if it is being crammed into an otherwise busy Saturday at the least inconvenient opening possible. On June 3rd, however, it will be back to where many believe it belongs.

The thinking behind this sudden reversion is, admittedly, not a romantic one. With Manchester City and Manchester United contesting the final, it has been deemed high risk by the Metropolitan Police, who have thus requested that it is not played later in the day. Similarly, an earlier kick-off gives more Mancunian supporters a greater opportunity to travel back up north in the aftermath of the clash. The last direct train from London to Manchester on that particular Saturday departs at 9.01pm.

But whatever the reasoning - however pragmatic or logistical it may be - there is a chance here for the FA Cup to feel a little bit special again. You see, at its core (unlike an entrenched monarchy) the jug-eared trophy is quite magical. Maybe we’ve lost sight of it amongst the perpetual glitz and opulence of the Premier and Champions Leagues, but we are fortunate to boast a knockout tournament that has retained a certain sense of wonder since the latter stages of the nineteenth century.

As such, the FA Cup is a rare outlier in that it is something yearned for by the usual traditonalists that doesn’t actively seek to make your life worse. What a novelty! And in that spirit, why shouldn’t we embrace the 3pm kick-off once again? In this, the age of the eternal reboot, I wouldn’t mind a return to the kind of exhaustive coverage of yesteryear we were once treated to, for instance. I’d quite happily watch Erling Haaland chow down on a bowl of cornflakes, or observe Scott McTominay struggling to tie a tie as teams of BBC camera folk documented every minute detail for no apparent reason whatsoever. Give me eight hours of Gary Lineker’s iffy puns and an endless cavalcade of rolling montages about everything and absolutely nothing all at once. It is, after all, just one day out of 365.

Of course, to properly reinstate the FA Cup to its former glory, it would take more than just a rejigging of the broadcast schedule. Then again, it doesn’t necessarily need to be fully resurrected. All we need is for the final to feel like a grand happening once more, a proper curtain call to the domestic campaign. Make it an occasion, make it unmissable. Hopefully a 3pm kick-off can go some way towards doing that.