What we need right now is joy and jeopardy of FA Cup

In these awful times, the sheer unbridled joy on Josh Coburn’s face as he burst through to thunder the extra-time winner into the net for Middlesbrough against Spurs was a bright light in the darkness. It felt like the right result at the right time. A youth academy kid from North Yorkshire playing for a club which has survived and occasionally thrived on the money of a local man, overcoming the might of a Bahamas-based investment company. It wasn’t exactly David and Goliath, not least because Goliath is often not very Goliath-like at all, but it was still a huge and thrilling win.

The striking thing about Middlesbrough under Chris Wilder is that, just as he has managed at pretty much every other club he has worked, the collective will can often overcome sides with perhaps more individual skill but who are less cohesive and even less motivated.

He achieves this through rigorous organisation, playing the right players in the right position and motivating them to give every ounce of themselves as often as possible. This is ideal for cup games when the winner takes all.

Normally, this game would have been a draw and a replay at Spurs would have happened next week. Spurs would have had a second chance they didn’t deserve. Their far greater resources would have given their sorry ass another chance. Basically, that is not fair.

That’s why we have to keep the single tie, taken to extra-time and penalties, decided on the day. It is leaner and while there are, of course, financial implications for the lower-level sides, it brings real jeopardy into the game and jeopardy is what we badly need because it is hugely diluted in every other competition.

In the league, financial disparities mitigate against jeopardy. In the Champions League, the seeding of some sides and all the other geopolitical chicanery to fix the group stage, reduces jeopardy to such an extent that there are often dead rubbers for the last one or two games; the two-leg knock-out ties also give either club a one-bad-game get-out clause. Same applies to the Europa Conference League and Europa League. While they can obviously still deliver great games, that is usually in the second leg when the fear of being knocked out is very real.

While the one-leg cup tie has been introduced out of necessity, it should be kept for future seasons. The tension and excitement in extra-time at the Riverside illustrate exactly why. The ground was packed to capacity, in part because the game would be settled on the night. You wouldn’t be fobbed off with a replay, you would see a winner. That’s a good sales proposition.

And it is great for broadcasters too for the same reason. The fact that the game will produce a winner one way or another, makes it compulsive, especially as a lower-league side bids to overcome a moneybags side. I bet the BBC got very good ratings for Tuesday night’s game as we all sought to escape The News for a couple of hours.

Had the game ended in a 0-0 draw, while Boro’s efforts would have been lauded, there would be a sinking feeling that money would eventually assert its primacy in a replay. But as it was, in extra-time Boro looked the stronger side and Coburn’s winner must have been cheered by all outside of some parts of north London. It is exactly what makes football so compulsive and so rewarding. The one-leg tie had created tension, anticipation, shock, joy and humanity.

And my God we need all the humanity we can get right now.