Are Crawley Town the least popular non-league FA Cup giant killers ever? - Telegraph
Are Crawley Town the least popular non-league FA Cup giant killers ever?
Crawley Town of the Blue Square Conference pulled off a huge FA Cup upset when they knocked out Championship side Derby County, but with the Davids from this story modern day goliaths in their own back yard, not everyone is celebrating.
By Steve Wilson 4:34PM GMT 11 Jan 2011
Whether it is jealousy of their wealth or their success this season – Crawley sit second in the Conference with games in hand on AFC Wimbledon at the top – Crawley’s FA Cup heroics have been met with something short of universal acclaim in the basement of English football.
A brief foray in to the unforgiving world of non-league blogs and forums today – as scientific a measure as breaking out a Ouija board but a useful barometer of feeling nonetheless – reveals more dissenting voices than messages of congratulation.
The team that visiting fans describe as “just a car park for Gatwick” are less than loved by their likely soon to be former peers, with the silver lining from Crawley’s success found only in the fact that they may be heading for a spell of fixture congestion that might derail their promotion charge.
Football’s tribalism dictates that those who are not with you are against you at whatever level the game is played at. But the antipathy in which Crawley are held in their own division goes deeper and relates to a sense that even here money talks and you can buy your way to success.
The top tier of non-league football is no longer a place inhabited by school teachers, postmen and factory workers playing for the love of the game in their stolen free time. That still exists further down, but in the professionalised Conference of recently relegated league clubs and the upwardly mobile, splashing the cash will take you a long way.
