There have been times these past nine months when the FA Cup has seemed to be breathing its last: devalued, diminished and crushed into virtual irrelevance by football’s high-and-mighty elite.
The abolition of replays, fourth-round matches spread over five days and the setting of this Saturday’s final amid the penultimate instalment of the Premier League season. We didn’t even get a kick-off time for the final until early May.
Yet despite the myriad betrayals, the unquenchable prospect of romance is still there for Saturday. In finalists Crystal Palace, we have a thread back through some of the old competition’s most heady days.