Book Review: Walking in a Welsh Wonderland by Holly Hunt

The 2016/17 FA Cup competition will begin on Saturday 06 August 2016, a fact that will come as a great surprise to those fans within the game who only acknowledge its existence come the Third Round in January.

However, the reality is that a week before a ball is kicked at the start of the new Premier League season, 184 ties will take place in the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round. It will see teams with wondrous names such as Ashby Ivanhoe, Northampton Old Northamptonian Chenecks and Tadley Calleva, grace the oldest Cup competition in the world. They know that they won’t make it all the way to the Final at Wembley, but it is a competition that can provide tidy financial assistance from a ‘Cup Run’, as well as throw up some ‘Cup Magic’ and ‘Cup Upsets’ along the way.

In Walking in a Welsh Wonderland, Holly Hunt, Media Assistant at Gainsborough Trinity, details the FA Cup adventure of the club during the 2015/16 season. It is set over thirteen chapters, with a Foreword by Neil Warnock, who cut his managerial teeth at Trinity back in the early 1980s.

The opening chapter is an observational one on the 2015/16 FA Cup competition, highlighting the importance of the tournament to non-league and lower league professional clubs alike, and also details how a number of teams higher-up the food chain have come to devalue it.

Central to the book though are the chapters devoted to the round-by-round progress of Trinity. Here the reader is treated to details of the Lincolnshire ‘derby’ in the Second Qualifying Round at home against Boston United, a dramatic Third Qualifying Round tie away at Droylsden, the backs to the wall victory at Wrexham in the Fourth Qualifying Round (which is the inspiration for the book title) and the brave exit in the First Round at home to League One Shrewsbury Town.

Given that Hunt works in the media for the club, the familiarity with the club, its players and management translates easily in her writing. However, as with many self-published books, it would have benefited from some editing and proof-reading in places.

This though doesn’t detract from a book which has so much going for it. The match details are well supported by some excellent colour action shots and other chapters which reflect on the adventure Trinity enjoyed. One such looks at how the club invested the prize money from the ‘Cup Run’ and another on What could have been, in which Hunt nicely and neatly ties up Gainsborough’s part in the FA Cup with that of eventual winners Manchester United, the link being that Trinity’s First Round conquerors, Shrewsbury Town, were defeated by the Old Trafford club in the Fifth Round.

It is then all rounded off with a cracking facts and figures summary of the FA Cup games Trinity played, in which Hunt includes amongst other things, The Story told by Twitter, Players of the Competition and Goal of the Competition.

Of course this book is aimed at supporters of Gainsborough Trinity, but will be an interesting read for anyone wanting an insight into what the FA Cup can mean to non-league and lower league professional clubs.

Copies can be bought by contacting the club through its website: www.gainsboroughtrinity.com