Re: Eighteenth

Sheep2

1921 -22 was the season we forgot to enter the FA Cup.

We didn't forget to enter - we did.

What we forgot to do was to ask for exemption from the qualifying rounds. There were two deadlines for entering the Cup, one for if you were asking for exemption (from memory, end of March), and one just to enter (May). Club sec put in an entry before the end of March and assumed that would be enough as a deemed request for exemption. It wasn't.

There was a bit of a hoo-ha because you could not apply for exemption from qualifying in subsequent seasons unless you had reached the first round, AND the rules were you had to field your first-choice team in the Cup, so that would have meant for five or six matches having to put the Dan Tremellings in against Birmingham Corporation Transport or Bloxwich Strollers while the reserves were getting tonked at West Brom.

So it was a choice basically of relegation or avoiding the Cup until there was a safe year.

There was a compromise involving the regulation about the next year's exemption being dropped, and it being done on a year-by-year basis instead.