Cheadle Town 3-1 Crook Town

If you imagine the FA Cup tournament as a dinner party, the Premiership clubs are your guests: the ones that arrive when all of the hard work has been done. Today was the equivalent of walking through the doors of the supermarket to buy the food: The extra preliminary round.

Weatherwise, today was one hell of a wet and miserable day, marked by non-stop rain...and we mean non-stop rain. This made for an extremely greasy and awkward pitch to play on, which "aided" the sliding tackles but in turn meant that the referee had to produce quite a collection of yellow cards; I think around four CTFC players gained that particular honour.

A game that was 0-0 at half-time and looked as though it didn't have a goal in it suddenly sprang to life in the 57th minute when Andy Lindon collected a fumble by the Crook Town 'keeper and buried it into a virtually open net. Eight minutes later Cheadle Town were two-nil up when Deano ran onto a through ball and delicately chipped over the advancing goalkeeper; one of those where the ball seemed to take an age to drop into the net. With just two minutes to go it was game thoroughly over thanks to Vinny Braine's cool lob. Crook's consolation came with virtually the last kick of the match from a penalty.

A bow and a tip of the hat to the 30 or so supporters from Crook Town who provided a bit of an atmosphere in the Main Stand - best of luck for the rest of your season.

And so it's off to Alsager Town in two week's time for the Preliminary Round. Assuming it's built on time, Wembley here we come.

Pictures from the day (there's not many, I'm afraid) can be seen by clicking here.