Absolutely. A non-league team getting drawn at a Premier League club could literally double their revenue for the year. There have been instances of non-league clubs getting drawn at home against a big club but opting to swap venues for the payday.
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Are the ties determined afresh at each round, or is a static tree set up at the beginning (March Madness-style)? And why on earth are they called ties?
Each round has a fresh draw
As someone who has in the past taken nonleague teams to the Premier League in Football Manager. I lived for these FA Cup draws early on. Reach the 3rd round and draw Man City away would set the club up for 3 seasons. If FM is accurate, well over a million pounds, it might be more in real life.
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For example: the cheapest ticket at Man City is £58. With 53,400, that’s means a full house would draw at least £3 million in game day revenue.
45% of that is a game-changer for a non-league side.
Watching Shrewsbury vs. Wrexham, and it’s an entertaining match. As a long-suffering Palace fan, I’ve seen a lot of not-top flight football in my time, and the way these lower league teams play now is vastly better than “back in the day”.
Both teams are looking to get the ball down and play. League One teams in my day used to play as if letting the ball bounce was instant relegation. The ball and at least 25% of opposing players needed to be in the air at all times.
#OldFootballWasShit
Well, they were wearing onions on their belts, which was the fashion at the time.
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Not sure if this goes down as “sports”, but I ran across this vid of a private pilot flying a 2-seat Cessna across country.
Not expecting everyone to sit through the whole thing, but it does a great, quick, job of showing pre-flight checks and radio work.
She is in a Cessna 140. I learned in Cessna 150/152s, and I feel her pain climbing to 7,500’ because those things climbed slower than shit. (Except the fully-stressed 150 Aerobat that had a Rolls Royce engine and went upstairs like a bat out of hell).
This just took me back to fun times. Also, you can see her working hard at the radio work, but actually flying - keeping the plane heading in the right direction - is much less of an attention hog than driving. I am very jealous of her modern nav aids; I was doing this shit with a laminated maps, clay pens and a circular slide rule in my lap.
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She was flying to the event where my other neighbor died in a plane crash last summer.
Sorry to hear that. I understand that Oshkosh has a relatively high accident rate, mainly because they’re trying to squeeze 10,000 planes arriving over a couple of days into a relatively small airfield. Planes and traffic jams do not go well together.
Years ago in Plainview, Texas I saw the wings literally fall off the airplane during aerobatics while the pilot’s wife was announcing. It was horrific and I haven’t been to an airshow since…
I watched more of the YouTube pilot’s vids, and one thing I noticed was that there is an innocuous sticker on the instrument panel that states simply “No intentional spins with flaps deployed”. The YT pilot is flying a restored 1949 Cessna 140, which has the horsepower less than some lawn equipment, and would likely fall apart in mid-air under anything other than routine flying maneuvers.
The Cessnas on which I learned had anemic power plants and were not stressed for negative-G. In theory, if you experienced any negative-G, you run the risk of the wings “clapping hands” around the fuselage and your day ending pretty badly. And, with limited horsepower, your ability to recover from a bad situation was hampered even if the wings were still attached.
Conversely, the 150 Aerobat had a juiced up engine and was stressed to handle +8G and -4G, which meant throwing it around the sky was distinctly an option. Still, there could be situations where you could overtax the airframe and rip the wings off it. The trick is, you’re drilled until your brain melts about avoiding those situations.
Most people don’t really think about the inherent abilities of a car when they get in to drive it, because 99% of the time you will in no way, shape or form exceed its operating parameters. The biggest risk to you is other road users disobeying the rules and common sense (speeding, running lights etc.)
Planes are different. You will almost never (by which I mean never, but you cannot be absolute in such things) come across other pilots intentionally up to no good. If you watched any of the YT clip, you will see that everyone is heavily monitored and you can’t fart without letting someone know. You can hear all the other aircraft in the vicinity talking to the same controller you are, so you have a really good idea of where everyone is, what they’re doing and where they’re going even if you can’t see them. You just don’t get blindsided by someone texting on their phone and blowing through a red light; you just don’t have those points of conflict like you do every few hundred yards on city streets.
This is not to say that you don’t have to be vigilant at all times. You do. You are taught visually to sweep the sky, then your instruments, then the sky, rinse, repeat until you park and turn off the engine. But your immediate threat isn’t coming at you from behind a building, or suddenly going to veer into your path from mere feet away at a closing speed of 100mph.
In summary, if someone watched a bunch of YT videos of small planes crashing, I can see why they might not want to get in one. But you see reports of deadly car crashes every day, and no one thinks twice before gunning it onto a freeway on ramp to join hundreds of other road users who passed the same bare minimum driving test you did - possibly decades ago - zipping along at speeds faster than that Cessna 140 can muster.
I know which one gives me the willies more.
In the immortal words of Laverne DeFazio…no one ever fell 10,000 ft out of a Desoto.
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I don’t have a problem flying private aircraft. I’ve flown on helicopters in extremely dodgy circumstances. The incident I mentioned happened around 1983 and the aircraft was an Italian Portnavia that was being promoted by the pilot and his wife with aerobatics under an experimental license. There’s actually a YouTube video if you care to look. The cries of the woman on the P.A. while her husband plunged to his death in what amounted to a bus is unforgettable. The wings fluttered while spraying fuel to the infield while the fuselage pancaked within a few yards of a fuel tank.
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Planes are inherently stable; helicopters are inherently unstable. I’ve heard stories from people who landed on offshore platforms in helicopters in less-than-ideal weather, and my toes take about a week to uncurl.
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I read about her today. She crashed into a lake. Was a cause determined?
Your “friends” in the tech industry are listening. To you. To everyone. To everything. You’re welcome.
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FA Cup 4th round draw has been made. Spurs vs. Man City came out of the bowl along with a high percentage of all-Premier League matchups, which means the man whose job it is to warm certain of the balls will get fired later.
Here it is in full, matches to be played +/- Jan 27:
Watford vs Southampton
Blackburn Rovers vs Wrexham
Bournemouth vs Swansea City
West Bromwich Albion vs Wolverhampton Wanderers
West Ham United or Bristol City vs Nottingham Forest or Blackpool
Leicester City vs Hull City or Birmingham City
Sheffield Wednesday vs Coventry City
Chelsea vs Aston Villa
Ipswich Town vs Maidstone United
Liverpool vs Norwich City or Bristol Rovers
Tottenham vs Manchester City
Leeds United vs Plymouth Argyle
Crystal Palace or Everton vs Luton Town or Bolton Wanderers
Newport County or Eastleigh vs Wigan vs Manchester United
Sheffield United vs Brighton
Fulham vs Newcastle United
- Actual or potential all-PL matches emboldened.
ETA: All-PL matches are to be welcomed, IMHO. They thin the herd of the bigger clubs, allowing for a few of the smaller clubs to slip through, have some fun and make some money.
I believe it was a miscalculation by her, similar to how Roy Halladay died. My understanding that the surface of the water can be deceptive when flying over the water and changing altitude rapidly. I think JFK Jr died that way as well.