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FA Cup Third Round weekend has got to be one of the most exciting in the football calendar. After a few scrapes in the early rounds, hopefully your club's name reaches the hat for that nerve-jangling draw which could give you one of the country's biggest teams and a bumper pay-day. While Yeovil got Liverpool, Kidderminster paired up with Wolves and seven other Third Division clubs had a day out in Round 3, Rovers fans were left twiddling their thumbs and watching everybody else on TV again. In all fairness, facing Bournemouth away in the 1st Round was a tough prospect and the closely contested 1-0 defeat was far from an embarrassing exit. A positive result down there would have been a minor Cup shock but then I suppose winning any Cup tie under Ray Graydon is likely to be a Cup shock judging by his current record in charge at Rovers. In nine Cup matches so far, we have only won once and that was in extra-time against Unibond League Runcorn at the end of a replay. Like Carl Saunders' goal at Anfield, the play-off semi at Crewe in 1995 and the win at Derby, I was lucky enough to witness it first hand and knocking out Runcorn certainly ranks very high among those 'I was there' moments. That magical FA Cup run petered out in a 2nd Round replay at Rochdale, and Graydon's boys have done even worse in the other knockout competitions, losing to lowly opponents in the LDV Vans Trophy and gaining notoriety in becoming the first team ever to fail to qualify for the First Round of the League Cup last year! The few Division 3 fixtures that took place last Saturday saw Leyton Orient jump up the League with victory over Darlington and left us staring over our shoulders at the measly three-point gap to Cheltenham in 21st place. After playing Scunthorpe this weekend, my fingers are crossed that we can start picking up vital results in the next three games against Macclesfield, Rochdale and Carlisle. All three of those clubs are right behind us and have all recently changed their managers. Indeed in the bottom half only Rovers, Boston and Cambridge have stuck with the same gaffers from last season. Martin Ling's Orient and Colin Calderwood's Northampton have just gone past us in the table, while Jan Molby's Kidderminster are on the up and the returning Steve Parkin won his first game back with Rochdale last week. Then there are the teams right at the bottom to worry about like Macclesfield, who have won three out their last five under Jon Askey and John Ward's Cheltenham who are doing well too. Let us not forget Carlisle either, whom everyone thought were dead and buried. It has taken a while, but after a scandalous five points in 21 games, Paul Simpson's men have taken ten from their past four matches! It could be that most of the above are experiencing wonderful honeymoon periods and it may not last for long. But they are the sides taking the points at the moment and we cannot afford to drift for much longer before we sort ourselves out. A spate of injuries, particularly to knees, has not helped and the squad seems to have been passing around the flu for months but things have not got so bad that we have been forced to field half-a-dozen youth teamers. Not yet anyway.
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