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Australia's newest iconic cup deserves a permanent home

The FFA Cup presents a great opportunity to bring together football fans. (AAP Image/Jane Dempster)
Roar Rookie
12th August, 2015
93

Pitting plumbers and postmen against the game’s fulltime professionals, any club in Australia can enter the FFA Cup and have the chance to face an A-League team.

The Cup final, on November 7, will be the second biggest event on the Australian football calendar, surpassed only by the A-League grand final.

With the Round of 32 announced, we now face four months of hyperbole about ‘the magic of the Cup’, ‘fairy-tale runs’ and most of all ‘the road to the Cup final’.

So what of this fabled road? Where will we be watching the theatre unfold?

English football makes its annual pilgrimage to Wembley, Australian Rules to the MCG. The journey and the venue are essential threads in the fabric of the competition, as significant to the narrative of the occasion as the final two remaining sides.

And yet our Cup final venue won’t be decided until 10 days before the event.

An annual pilgrimage for the game is both a fan and a marketer’s dream, not least because it allows tickets and travel packages to be sold year-round.

But more importantly, it provides the backdrop against which the traditions and mystique of the Cup can be written.

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The FFA Cup is the vehicle to finally unite the wide base of the Australian football pyramid with the elite top end. It deserves to be iconic.

Our Cup and its legend deserve a home.

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