THE FA Cup draw is one of those events that has football fans glued to their screens.
The practice of drawing teams out of a bag goes back decades – in a competition that is steeped in tradition.
Denis Law and Terry Venables perform the FA Cup draw in 2000Times Newspapers Ltd
The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the worldPA
The world’s oldest football competition has retained some of its old charm in an age of VAR, robot assistant referees and goal-line technology.
The FA’s draws look and feel very different to Uefa’s Champions League and Europa League draws, where paper team names are taken out of plastic balls.
Why have the FA Cup draw balls numbered?
The FA Cup numbers correspond to the tie winners from previous rounds.
So a team – or two teams – will be associated with that number.
Here are a selection of numbers from the FA Cup fourth round draw in the 2022-23 season:
1 Preston North End2 Brighton & Hove Albion3 Chesterfield or West Bromwich Albion4 Manchester City or Chelsea5 Stockport County or Walsall6 Boreham Wood or Accrington Stanley7 Tottenham Hotspur8 Derby County or Barnsley9 Cardiff City or Leeds United10 Brentford or West Ham United11 Burnley, etc
If a tie has yet to be played or the tie from that round has been drawn and goes to a replay, two clubs are associated wit that number, such as Chesterfield or West Bromwich Albion.
How do they decide on the order for the numbers?
There are two criteria:
How early that team came out of the draw. So if a team came from the first round or second round and made it to the fourth round, they will have a low number.Alphabetical order. This usually gives Arsenal a low number and York City a higher number. Read More