Penrith v Sunderland RCA on Saturday - the big day has almost arrived to start my journey

The big day has finally arrived – almost.

On Saturday I start my Road to Wembley from Scotland. Just to reiterate:

The idea is quite simple. Once the draw for the Extra Preliminary round of the FA Cup is made I will establish which of these ties will be staged closest to the Scotland / England border. I will attend that match and I will then follow the winner into the Preliminary round. The winners of that match will then be followed into the first qualifying round ... and so on ... and so on - until I end up at the FA Cup final next May. Had I been 'on the road' in season 15-16 I would have started at Penrith v Jarrow Roofing in August 2015 and ended up watching Manchester United beat Crystal Palace last month. For each match I will be trying to find a Scottish link and reporting not just on the match but the circumstances surrounding the tie.

The tie in question in the Extra Preliminary Round is Penrith v Sunderland Ryhope Community Association. Penrith have a fab link to Scotland in that their Physio Susan Pollock is Scottish. Sunderland RCA have a number of Scots links including links with great Scots Sunderland players of the 60s. The main link is that the grandson, Ross McNab, of the legendary Scots half back Jim McNab currently plays for Sunderland RCA.

Both teams have completed impressive pre-season campaigns and are in good form. In their final matches Penrith put a good show at their Frenchfields Stadium ground against a strong Carlisle side earlier this week going down 0-3. Sunderland RCA’s last pre-season game was a 3-1 victory against Pickering. Pics from both matches are shown below courtesy of John France and the Sunderland RCA web site respectively.

 

Penrith and Carlisle doing battle at the Frenchfields 

Kevin Gordon of Sunderland RCA smiling as he goes past a Pickering defender

Now the real action begins and I will be there for my first stop on the Road to Wembley from Scotland. The first competitive match in season 2016-17 for both sides is the FA Cup tie in Penrith this Saturday – the 6^th August. I am so looking forward to it and hoping that Ross McNab is picked to play for SRCA. Also looking forward to seeing Susan Pollock wield the Scottish magic sponge when treating injured Penrith players – hopefully not too many will need the Caledonian treatment.

Anorak note: Having tested my ‘quality of the experience’ categories in Annan a fortnight ago I am combining the ‘quality of play’ and ‘entertainment’ categories into simply ‘entertainment value’ and introducing a new category ‘Scottishness’. It is after all The Road to Wembley from Scotland !