An FA Cup third-round tie against Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur is just about as big as it gets for Tamworth FC, who currently play in the National League — the fifth tier of English football.
But the Midlands town itself used to be a big deal. In the eighth and ninth centuries, it was the Anglo-Saxon capital of Mercia, the largest kingdom on the main island of the British Isles until the Norman invasion of 1066. And a castle has stood overlooking the place ever since the Normans arrived.
Over the intervening centuries, the market town, situated less than 20 miles north-east of Birmingham, in the county of Staffordshire, has rarely been in the news.
Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the modern police force, was the local MP. The infamous three-wheeled Reliant Robin car used to be manufactured on the outskirts of the town centre, while the nation’s first indoor ski centre, the Snowdome, opened there in 1994.
Later in the 1990s, two Sandyback pigs — the breed Tamworth is famous for producing — went on the run after escaping an abattoir and were dubbed ‘Butch and Sundance’ by the national press. They were recaptured but given a reprieve from the bacon slicer.
But occasionally, the relative obscurity has been punctuated by the local football club.
The Lambs, a far-from-fearsome nickname derived from the pub of the same moniker that used to stand on the corner of their ground in the centre of the town (yes, you can see the SnowDome from there), have been deep in English football’s non-League system for most of their existence. As recently as 2023, they were playing in the seventh-tier Southern Premier League Central, before back-to-back promotions saw them return to the National League for the first time in a decade this summer.
But occasionally, thanks mainly to the FA Cup, they have garnered national attention.
They held Stoke City, then as now in the second-tier Championship, to a goalless away draw in the third round in 2005-06, before falling to defeat in a penalty shootout after the replay also ended level, 1-1. They then lost 4-1 at home to Norwich City, also Championship opposition, in front of a live national television audience a year later. Then in 2012, there was a trip to Goodison Park to face Everton, a Premier League side and five-time FA Cup winners, where the Lambs lost by a respectable score of 2-0.
But those occasions will be small fry compared to being drawn at home tonight to host Spurs, who have lifted the FA Cup eight times, in January’s third round — the stage where Premier League sides enter the competition and can often be pitted against sides from much lower on the football ladder in romantic David vs Goliath fixtures.
It will be the biggest game in the club’s 91-year history.
The Tamworth players, still only part-time footballers in a league where most of their rivals are fully professional, are led by captain Jas Singh, a building surveyor by trade but also the goalkeeper who saved two penalties in the shootout victory at Burton Albion of League One, English football’s third tier, that booked their place in round three, will be facing a whole new challenge against Spurs.
But so will the away side.
It is extremely unlikely that Spurs’ Australian head coach Ange Postecoglou, South Korea national-team captain Son Heung-min, £60million England striker Dominic Solanke or Argentine 2022 World Cup winner Cristian Romero will have experienced anything like what awaits them on their visit to The Lamb since their formative years in the game.
For starters, it has an artificial pitch, which lies on a slope. When Tamworth still played on natural grass, the angle from the Cross Street entrance to the ground in the top corner down to the Castle End opposite was even more pronounced, but when the club installed the all-weather surface so they could generate more revenue by staging non-matchday events, they did remove some of the slope… but not all.
The stadium only holds 4,000, and while there are usually over 1,000 there now for home games, there used to be a hardcore of just 600, but they always make a good noise.
The dugouts are directly in front of The Shed, so named because it was built with corrugated iron, with wooden railway sleepers used to create the terracing. This is where the most vociferous fans congregate, not just to get behind their team, but also to get in the ear of the visiting manager sitting just a few feet away.
Former Leicester City, Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers midfielder Robbie Savage was given a particularly hostile reception when he took his Macclesfield side to Tamworth in the fourth qualifying round in October, and lost 4-2.
The dressing rooms are old portable cabins that sit behind the clubhouse. Only in recent years has a roof been added to protect the players from the elements.
The national media will also be in unfamiliar territory. Instead of the palatial press boxes of the Premier League, the press bench has about eight to 10 seats. For that Norwich game in 2006, a scaffolded temporary press area had to be built high up over a corner of the ground, which could only be accessed by a rickety ladder.
On the pitch, Tottenham will have to contend with a direct style of play under manager Andy Peak, including the howitzer-like long throw of midfielder Tom Tonks, who looks to launch the ball into the penalty area from anywhere inside the opposition half. It was one of his throws that led directly to Tamworth’s winner in the first round, when they dumped out League One side Huddersfield Town 1-0.
Up against a packed-in, partisan crowd, at an open and windswept little ground, on an artificial and sloping pitch — probably on live national television and in rotten January weather — this will not be a day for the faint-hearted among the Spurs squad.
Postecoglou and company, you have been warned.
(Top photo: Harriet Massey/Getty Images)