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FINAL FLOURISH: Cliff and Kathy Goddard

APPARENTLY the FA Cup is losing its appeal - try telling football fanatic Cliff Goddard and his wife Kathy.

The couple have scaled the length and breadth of the country from their Bere Regis home to watch matches in every round of this season's competition. Starting off at Poole Town's Tatnam ground, the Goddards have travelled approximately 2,100 miles to attend all 13 rounds leading up to this afternoon's final.

Despite not intending to embark on such a mammoth task when they went to watch Tom Killick's Dolphins host Dawlish in the extra preliminary round on August 18, the pair ended up visiting 15 different venues en route to the Wembley showpiece between Portsmouth and Cardiff City.

"I kept saying to my wife that at some point it would finish because once we got to the bigger games we wouldn't be able to get tickets, but one thing led to another," postman Goddard told the Daily Echo.

"We tried to keep it as local as possible because I wanted to be involved with the local clubs and not to drag my wife too far afield.

"As far as my wife was concerned, it was ending at Chelsea in the fifth round. It was great to get to Chelsea and I said to my wife that's it, we'll never get tickets for a quarter-final game'.

"But I had in the back of my mind that Middlesbrough was a possibility because they don't always sell out. I managed to get tickets and then broke it to my wife that we were going to the north east."

For "sheer atmosphere", Goddard, 55 next week, ranked the Middlesbrough-Cardiff tie as a highlight. But he also enjoyed his trips to the less salubrious stadia.

"All the way through we kept saying that this is the same competition that the likes of Sherborne and Poole were playing in," he said.

"The FA Cup sees everybody going into the same competition - it's a terrific thing.

"We got to the semi-final at Wembley with 90,000, but when we went to the early games you could literally count the number of people.

"It's been downgraded in some clubs' eyes at the very highest echelons of the game, they feel perhaps it's not their top priority. I'd disagree and I think it illustrates football is a sport for everybody at all levels."

Someone who knows all about the competition is Football Association historian David Barber, who revealed that the Goddards' feat was not unique.

He said: "The idea of following a team from the extra preliminary round to the final, where you follow the team that wins in each round, became quite fashionable after Brian James's Tividale to Wembley' book in 1979.

"More people have preferred to simply take in one tie from each round, where you travel as near or as far as you want to.

"In one season I saw a game in every round of the FA Cup, FA Trophy and FA Vase. It was hard, because sometimes two competitions had a round on the same day."

The Goddards travelled to London yesterday to spend time with their daughter, who is a medical student in the capital, ahead of today's match.

And who would Cliff like to see lift the famous silverware?

"Portsmouth are fairly local and there's the Harry Redknapp connection," he said. "He was a player when I used to follow Bournemouth. But my mother's side of the family is from Wales, so I'm on the fence!"

7:00am Saturday 17th May 2008

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