'FA Cup final day and the crowd are getting excited. TK Maxx is about to open its doors'

Is there anything out there that beats the magic of the cup? Well, yes. There is. Quite a lot of things as it goes.

There was a time when FA Cup final day really meant something. Football fans around the country, regardless if their team was involved, would look forward to the match all week and gather round their tiny black and white TV's with their family, enthralled by the greatest cup competition in the world. These days it's a little bit different - apart from maybe Kiddieminster. Non Chelsea and Portsmouth fans are more likely to choose the torturous experience of TK Maxx on a Saturday with the family rather than sit through the undoubted snore-fest of Chelsea v Portsmouth.

Who can blame them? Fighting off other rabid shoppers for the only thing that isn't size XXXXL on the 'reduced rail' is far more appealing than watching Didier Drogba screaming into the camera with his top off after he manages to score against a team that has been picked on a 'who do we have to pay the least if we win?' basis.

In a desperate attempt to raise real interest, the media are billing it as a 'David v Goliath' contest, plucky Portsmouth v the mighty Chelsea. If David had tried to keep up with Goliath by paying ridiculous money for stones that he knew were to expensive for him but continued buying them anyway, despite the fact he was getting ever deeper into debt and knew that in some point in the future he would owe so much that he would have to sell all of his stones and struggle to fight Goliath again on a regular basis - if ever -  then the biblical story might have been used as a symbolic representation of the match. A more accurate tag-line would be 'Disgraceful financial mis-management v Disgracefully unfair financial support'. The Sky Sports' VT editors might struggle to make a catchy little trail for the final with that though.

When a 59-year Stanley Matthews won the cup about 80 years ago for Blackpool - or was it Scarbrough - the final was named after him. When everybody's favourite Scouser with a hairline an inch above his eyebrows, Steven Gerrard, pinged one in in the last seconds to help Liverpool on their way to victory over West Ham, the game would be forever referred to in connection with his name. One can only wonder what this year's final be be remembered for. Perhaps the 'manager who looks like a suicidal toad looked even more depressed on the sidelines' final. Or maybe the 'exact moment when the nation realised John Terry was a cart-horse and knew he would go on to make a outrageous mistake that would see England eliminated in the second round of the World Cup' final.

However the final is remembered, I am pretty sure it won't go down in history as a wondeful game in the true traditions of the sport. Watching players loose their footing every four seconds on a pitch that's not fit for game in the East of Kilmarnock Church's League (Division 3) while a largely obese crowd glug £7 Cokes, worrying about whether the underdeveloped transport links will get them home in time for Britain's Got Talent is not my idea of fun. That's why I will probably end up in some faceless retail hell-hole instead. Besides, there is an XXL lime green Ted Baker polo shirt I have had my eye on for a while. And things like that don't come along every year...