“THE magic of the FA Cup” is a phrase regularly heard, usually when the football calendar approaches the new year and teams from the top two tiers of English football enter the old competition. 

The FA Cup is to be cherished and celebrated, but this phrase has become a forced marketing slogan as much as something that actually happens, as TV promos and press releases insist that the event they are about to show will be magic. Guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the EFL Cup, formerly the League Cup — the one with the sponsor names — has become an afterthought and is often the first competition raised for removal when it comes to which fixtures in the increasingly busy football schedule can be ditched.

There is no talk of the magic of the EFL Cup, but magic in sport is not made through marketing or PR; it occurs in unpredictable moments on the field. 

There was one such moment this week as Grimsby Town defeated Manchester United on penalties in the second round.

Before we get to that, it’s worth pointing out that not all football is magic. Some of it turns out to be pretty boring, and that’s fine.

Such games are part of the supporters’ bank of experiences. They might not please advertisers or broadcasters, but that’s not who football is for. For Grimsby supporters, for example, witnessing an uneventful 0-0 or a defeat in the National League or League Two makes witnessing a victory against Man United in the cup all the more special.

Part of the joy of football is that you can’t predict when the magic will happen. There is always the pre-match hope that your team will do well, or the acceptance that another defeat is on the cards, but a glimmer of a chance that it might not be.

In some ways, though, Grimsby’s victory against Manchester United was not unpredictable.

Despite the gaps between the two sides in terms of resources and league placing, the sport itself can serve as a leveller in certain circumstances. The location and environment in which it is played contribute to that, and Grimsby, at their Blundell Park home, have a fairly unique one. It’s as impressive as Old Trafford in its own way. Their Theatre of Dreams.

Ninety minutes of unpredictability on a levelled playing field led to the idea that, spoken in soft tones, Grimsby could have a chance here, you know. A very real chance that the visiting, reeling giant might well be overcome by a plucky but also better-organised, pound-for-pound, fourth-tier outfit on the banks of the Humber.

The Mariners took advantage of this favourable tide with two first-half goals, and could have gone 3-0 up in the second half but for a controversially disallowed goal.

Though Manchester United came back into it and levelled at 2-2, they never looked convincing, not least during the penalty shootout when their manager was hidden away in a rain-soaked Blundell Park dugout.

This was Grimsby’s terrain. The psychology of penalty shootouts works on small percentages, and in the driving coastal rain, rather than the Manchester drizzle, they gained an edge and won the tie.

There are many clubs where location, culture, and recent social history play a part, and Grimsby Town are an epitome of this.

“These are what we might call end-of-the-line towns which the residents consider to be routinely ignored by governments,” wrote Daniel Storey of The i paper in an ode to Blundell Park last season.

“The maps for sale in the House of Commons seem to stop bothering 10 miles from the coast in certain areas and ignore entire sections of the north completely.

“These towns also — sorry, gear change — tend to create conditions for wonderful, traditional football clubs who exist as the pride of their people.”

Josh Bland, who is a PhD researcher at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, has spent several months living in the Grimsby and Cleethorpes area as part of research into football clubs’ role in the resilience shown within communities following deindustrialisation.

“Grimsby is a town on its last legs, decimated by the collapse of the fishing industry, which once employed over 80 per cent of the workforce in the town,” he says.

“But whilst Grimsby has been afflicted by deindustrialisation and generations of underinvestment, what it does have is a deeply authentic, deeply loved, deeply historical football club which has sat at the beating heart of the town since 1878 — a broad cultural continuity against a context of rupture and change.”

As both allude to, seaside towns and northern towns are among those in the country most neglected by governments. Regeneration references and includes cities, not towns, and even then, often only works to regenerate capital and create a facade, rather than regenerate community or anything of use or pride to people living in these areas.

Football clubs can then become an even bigger source of pride because they provide the links to the past, but also a sense of continuation and a future.

“The fans continue to honour that fishing heritage through their rituals and support of the club,” Bland tells the Morning Star.

“The fact that they inflate their Harry Haddocks, the fact that they chant about fish, the fact that the club is called the Mariners, even the fact that you can see over the Humber estuary from the Ramsdens stand … the fishing past feels very present everywhere.

“But it also feels like the football club is the place where Grimsby is forging a future.”

This is where the magic of the cup really exists, thanks to clubs like Grimsby Town. And indeed thanks to Manchester United, whose role, no matter how much they have been ridiculed and dropped off in recent times, is important. Their fans are currently going through their own tough period that will make any future success all the more enjoyable.

As for the magic of the competitions themselves, football needs to work out its increasingly packed and unworkable schedule, where additional games in lucrative tournaments such as the Champions League endanger local tournaments that matter mostly, sometimes only, but often greatly, to the two teams involved.

Not everything in football should have to appeal to anyone beyond those working with and supporting the two teams playing each other, but there is the increasing idea that it has to and, in terms of the money involved, that it needs to.

For Grimsby, the magic exists in Blundell Park, where it matters mostly to local residents and matters greatly, to the point of being essential.