A Tottenham team of Hoddle, Ardiles and Archibald were the opponents that stopped Exeter City the last time the Devon club went beyond the third round of the FA Cup. A quarter-final defeat by the eventual winners 44 years ago came after the scalps of Leicester and Newcastle in earlier rounds. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Nick Hawker, the chairman of Exeter City Supporters’ Trust – which owns the club – since 2017 and a fan for much longer. “The thrill of it. Going to White Hart Lane was just amazing.”
In the intervening decades Exeter have encountered near-extinction but also enjoyed other noteworthy Cup occasions, with the fourth-round visit on Tuesday of Nottingham Forest, third in the Premier League, the next in line. Nuno Espírito Santo follows Alex Ferguson and Jürgen Klopp in taking teams to St James Park.
The financial influx from the third-round tie against Manchester United in 2005, when non-league Exeter secured a goalless draw at Old Trafford before losing the replay, is credited with pulling the club, which had recently come under fan ownership, out of the mire.
“We were still firefighting,” says the club secretary, Andy Gillard, who volunteered at the time to help prevent City from going under. The president, Julian Tagg, often says that before the United tie Exeter were £4.5m in debt, and that after those two games they simply had no money. By the time they drew Liverpool at home in 2016, the Grecians were an established Football League club but still a bit of a novelty. A dazed Klopp gave his post-match interview in St James Park’s pokey kitchen after watching his second string eke out a 2-2 draw.
Given the financial significance to Exeter of the replays against United and Liverpool, it is no surprise that the decision to scrap them is unpopular here. “Travesty,” Hawker says before he has even waited until the end of the question. “It just says: ‘We’re OK if a Premier League club goes to Saudi Arabia or Australia or the United States to do lots of exhibition matches but not OK playing a competitive replay.’”
Exeter’s manager, Gary Caldwell, has a grand FA Cup history of his own, having lifted the trophy as club captain when Wigan shocked Manchester City in the 2013 final. “It was an amazing achievement for such a small club,” Caldwell says. “In this competition, a club always rises above what it can do. I said to the players at the start of this year: ‘Why can’t that be us?’”
Since knocking out Championship Oxford in round three, the Scot’s injury-hit side have endured heavy defeats in League One, conceding 13 goals in their past three games. The sale of their leading goalscorer, Millenic Alli, to Luton last month – a year after he was signed from non-league Halifax – has been another problem to contend with but one that comes with the territory, especially at the only fan-owned club in the top three tiers of English football.
“We have to do it a different way,” Caldwell says. “The Alli sale is probably the greatest example of that. We signed him a year ago for a very small fee and in 12 months’ time turned that into a very large fee.” This sustainable model, also fuelled by the resale value of academy graduates such as Ollie Watkins, is not a choice, though. “That is what the club needs to do, not what it wants to do,” Caldwell says.
One initiative run by the ownership is the 1931 Fund, named after the year of another famous FA Cup run, whereby fans who cannot regularly attend matches contribute to the wages of a player, who wears the No 31 shirt. “It’s quite special,” says Exeter’s captain, Pierce Sweeney, whose initial move to the club in 2016 was made possible by the fund. “Now looking back, it meant an awful lot more to me knowing the fans have paid towards me being here.”
Since joining City, Sweeney has witnessed the club transform. The size of the squad, coaching staff and home attendances have steadily grown and their training facilities have been upgraded. “It was quite derelict,” Sweeney says as he remembers the old building at the training ground that was replaced two years ago. “The canteen was in the same room as the gym. Somebody would be having breakfast and somebody else would be doing a session on the bike beside.”
Now, the chef-staffed canteen is located the floor above the kitted-out gym. The stairway that connects them is flanked by a timeline of the club’s history, with markers for the 1931 and 1981 Cup runs, as well as for their tour of South America in 1914, when they faced a combined team of players from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – widely recognised to be the first match featuring a Brazilian national team. “You speak to Brazilian football fans and you mention Exeter, and it’s incredible how many of them know: ‘Ah, Exeter City, yes,’” Gillard says.
St James Park, with the largest standing-only terrace in the EFL, has also received facelifts. On Tuesday it welcomes a Nottingham Forest side that could include the in-form Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White. “We’re hoping they leave them at home,” Caldwell says with a smile.
“We’ve got to do the dark arts well,” says Sweeney, who will endure a “nerve-racking” watch from the stands owing to a calf injury. Does he think Forest’s long journey south could be a factor? “I would say it’s a long way but I think they’ll probably fly.”
Tickets for the big night are the same price as for a regular league match. That, and the refusal to sign sponsorship deals with betting companies, are signs of a club with a moral compass. “We do what the independent regulator is trying to achieve for other clubs,” Hawker says. “It’s not about winning last week or next week, it’s about where is the club in three to five years’ time.”
Exeter’s short-term survival no longer hinges on a Cup fairytale, but another scalp on Tuesday would not hurt their long-term prospects.
