The venue for this season's FA Cup, whether it be Wembley or the Millennium Stadium, remains about the most intriguing aspect of a tournament that in recent years has been so abused and insulted it should be in a refuge for battered icons.

There are times when you wonder whether the grand old pot will ever recover its lustre, the powers-that-be having simply failed to protect what should have been a Grade I Listed sporting property. Now admittedly, I approach this subject from a slightly biased perspective . . .

one which regards thirdround Saturday as a sacred day on the calendar. A day when we should pause for a moment and recall such moments as Ronnie Radford and Ricky George's goals for Hereford against Newcastle in 1972 or Wrexham's Mickey Thomas who caused such trouble for Arsenal 20 years later. These were occasions when the bulging egos of the managerial leviathans were badly bruised and reputations were smashed.

We still look back fondly on days which evoke sepia-tinged images of mud-heaps for pitches and umpteen replays.

Did you know that the fourth qualifying round tie between Alvechurch and Oxford City in 1972 took six matches and 11 hours before the former eventually prevailed? They were days when the FA Cup could represent a serial relationship between two sides;

not as Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson would now prefer it, a one-night stand in their desire to turn their clubs' progress into a fast track to the final.

Dispensing with replays for teams in Europe? The competition has surely been downgraded enough already since those times when replays were played the following week. Since the disappearance of the European Cup Winners' Cup the victors are now rewarded with nothing more seductive than that metaphor for tedium and irrelevance, the revamped Uefa Cup.

Of course, we will never return to the days when the FA Cup truly did have a unique fascination. Everton's 1995 triumph was the only occasion since the creation of the Premiership and the concentration of power within the Big Four that another club has intruded in that cartel's domination.

No wonder clubs are inhibited by the belief that winning the FA Cup is beyond them. Reading's Steve Coppell made that claim earlier in the season and the facts generally support him. Though, in truth, if his men overcome Manchester United in Tuesday night's replay, he may possibly have cause to review that opinion.

But just contrast the Premiership years with the 46 post-War years prior to 1992.

In that period, no fewer than 23 different clubs lifted the trophy when the FA Cup genuinely can be said to have spread its favours around generously. It is imperative to the health of the game that the FA Cup does not go the way of the League Cup.

Today, the competition has become no more than an afterthought for many clubs.

On Tuesday night, the combined effects of United's fixture congestion and Reading's proximity to a conceivable European place means that the Royals and the Champions-elect will entertain the BBC's prime-time audience with starting line-ups containing possibly eight players in each side who wouldn't normally be first choice.

Though the BBC's viewing figures for live FA Cup football are not exactly in spiralling decline, neither do they suggest that the nation is agog at the prospect. Upgrading the winner of the FA Cup to the Champions League is an absolute non-starter. But what is required is a renewed respect for the competition. It will never receive the buffing up it needs until the Fergusons and Coppells of this world declare unambiguously that they are up for the Cup and deploy the teams that allow us to once again realise the magic of the Cup.