These were the scores: Welling 3 AFC Hornchurch 1, TNT 2 Athletico Chips 2, Whyteleafe 0 Walton Casuals 0, Perivale 3 Cranford 0, Boodle Hatfield 2 Visa 2, Warrington 0 Eastern Promise 6, Tooting 2 Boreham Wood 0, Bonham 4 Dixon Wilson 4 and Abbey 7 Alba 1.
I went to the Welling replay with Colum from our Financial Advisory Unit, who is trying to see a tie in every round this season from Extra Preliminary Round to The Final.
We left The FA around 5.45, walked down to Charing Cross through hordes of commuters, and had to stand all the way. It was so hot on the train that the anorak had to come off.
The Barber’s garment has such legendary status now that it’ll be switching on the Christmas lights at Oxford Street this year on its own. I won’t even be wearing it.
The Welling "Wings" were a goal up in five minutes, then conceded a penalty for 1-1. I went to the boudoir for about 30 seconds and missed the home side’s second goal. You wouldn’t believe how often that happens.
We took a bus back to the station and stopped briefly at "The Plough and Harrow", where they’d been watching Chelsea v Barcelona on the biggest screen I’d ever seen.
Church Road, Whyteleafe’s very rural home, is one of my favourite football venues. My first game there, in 1964, was a Surrey Senior League Cup tie against Malden Town. ‘Leafe lost 2-5 and there were three penalties, all scored.
Aged 13 then, I stood out of the rain in a little shed on the halfway line. Four or five elderly gents, most of them with walking sticks, constituted the rest of the "crowd".
Six years ago, at a ground now barely recognisable, I had the thrill of seeing ‘Leafe take on Chester City in The FA Cup’s First Round Proper. The attendance that afternoon was 2,164 and even the "Match of the Day" cameras were there to record a ‘Leafe penalty miss ten minutes from time in a 0-0 draw.
I used to like going to Sandy Lane, Tooting’s old ground, in those far-off days too. In the 1962-63 season we had to endure something called "The Big Freeze", when hardly any football was played for more than two months.
My first game after that long break was Tooting v St Albans in the Amateur Cup and one of the home players that day, Gordon Holden, was mentioned in Tuesday’s programme.
The Tooting fans called him "Golden", though he’d lost a bit of hair when I saw him.
Last Sunday morning I paid my first visit of the season to Ealing Central Sports Ground and was one of four people in spitting rain who saw Perivale Association play Cranford Casuals. Half-an-hour into the game there was a hold-up of several minutes when a Perivale striker lashed a shot miles over the bar and the ball got stuck high up in a hedge behind the goal.
Nothing would dislodge it. Players were shaking the branches, sometimes three of them at once. One player got onto another’s back and swatted at the ball with a spectator’s umbrella.
Then someone who’d been practising golf swings about a hundred yards away, up to that point taking no interest in the game, ran over to help by whacking the hedge with his club.
Two players went off to the changing rooms and came back with a step ladder. But in the end the ball seemed to drop down by itself. Otherwise there would’ve been quite a curious abandonment.