The Cup that nourishes the minnows is worth saving

You see, for hundreds of thousands of non-League football fans and their clubs, it's first-round day that's the best day of the calendar.
The FA Cup doesn't start on the first weekend in January; it doesn't even start with the first round proper on the first weekend in November. It actually started this season on August 16, the same weekend as the Premier League season and seven days after the Football League.
Over that weekend, almost 400 clubs whom ITV would no doubt call 'minnows' took part in the extra preliminary round.
Their dream and the dream of those hundreds of other clubs who joined at the preliminary, first qualifying round and second qualifying round stages, was to get to the first round and draw a League club.
And the income from the game wouldn't go towards paying the reserve-team right back an extra £5,000 a week but would go, in most cases, towards keeping the club alive for another 12 months. This season, 14 clubs from AFC Wimbledon to Accrington Stanley, managed it.
I've been at six of these games during my 14 seasons watching Tamworth FC and in almost every case, they were the highlight of the season for Lambs fans and players.
It takes them to grounds they would never normally go to, in front of crowds they would never normally see because unlike the big clubs, League One and Two teams still appreciate the Cup so first-round gates are as good as ever.
And although some might decry the 'it's our day out at Wembley' brigade, 'our day out at Colchester/Exeter/Bury/Rochdale/Stoke' means an awful lot to non-League supporters. It may be irrational emotion, but what is a sports fan if not the personification of irrational emotion?
Once in a blue moon, the dream first-round tie for a non-League club turns into a dream second- or third- or even fourth/fifth-round tie.
The difference that can make to such a club is incalculable. I was at the Birmingham City v Kidderminster Harriers third-round tie in 1993-94 and the publicity and financial boost Harriers received from winning that game and getting to the fifth round provided the platform that eventually carried them into the Football League.
It is to these non-League clubs and their fans that the FA Cup still does matter because they don't get blasé about the game. They do it because they care.
What is to be done about the Cup? One [semi-serious] suggestion would be to stop it at the third-round stage and allocate all the prize money to each of those surviving clubs.
I've lost count of the number of interviews I've read with non-League managers saying that 'the money from winning that game would keep the club going for another few months.'
How about awarding the winners of the Cup (indeed, the domestic cup of every European nation) a place in the Champions' League, thus ensuring that just finishing in the top four of the Premier League every year wouldn't be good enough for the 'big four?"
One really good suggestion, of course, would be to abolish the utterly pointless group stages of the European competitions.
But that would bring an end to the days of paying the reserve-team right back an extra £5,000 a week; which is impossible, obviously.