As usual it has been another busy week at King’s Lynn Town.

We drew at Worksop in the FA Cup last Saturday, conceding an equaliser in the 98th minute, but did ourselves proud on Tuesday night when we beat our opponents on penalties, even though we were reduced to 10 men.

There was a lot of talk around crowd issues with some of our long-standing fans being abused in Nottinghamshire, and in some cases, attacked with there being a distinct lack of stewards on duty. Worksop were clearly miffed with us speaking out and on Wednesday their club secretary phoned the referee to complain that their goalkeeper was racially abused during the penalty shoot-out.

It was, in our view, a false allegation and frankly stank of sour grapes. Our head of health and safety, Sarah, was at the end of the ground where the abuse was said to have originated, along with several stewards, and she confirmed that there was no abuse, racial or otherwise. The goalkeeper himself was white, but complained that the abuse was anti-Polish.

Worksop do not wear player names on the back of their shirts so it is highly unlikely that anyone at that end of the ground even knew he was Polish and in any case, our fans sang “Polska, Polska Polska” to Bart Cybulski whenever he came onto the pitch before leaving for Spalding. Far from being anti-Polish, they are pro-Polish, even brandishing a Polish flag at The Walks and away games.

Club secretaries know that abuse should be reported at the time, not a day later, so maybe someone came up with the idea on the drive back home. But making false allegations should also be deemed an offence by the FA.

The positive news, though, is that we get to play Curzon Ashton, our manager's and assistant manager's old club. We know they have an excellent team and are firm favourites to progress, but we will give it everything that we have.

From a chairman’s perspective, financially it is a bad draw. Curzon get some of the worst attendances in the league and our expenses will be high. I estimate our coach costs and hotel will be £3,814 once we receive allowable expenses towards our coach travel. The referee’s match fee is £300 plus 40p a mile fuel allowance, the assistants get £150 each plus 40p a mile and the fourth official £100 plus 40p a mile. Once allowable costs, such as stewarding, floodlights and medical are taken into account, I am not sure that either side will receive too much in gate receipts.

If we lose the game, we receive £3,125 and if we win £9,375. If we do get lucky, we will pay bonuses from our winnings and once we deduct travel expenses we will not have too much left over.

That said, we would be in the first round proper - and who knows who we could draw and where we could end up.

It is that journey that brings players and fans closer together so after chatting to my partner Jo in Asia we have decided to run a subsidised coach at just £15 per fan. Jo would like to send more than one coach towards Manchester as he rightly feels that our supporters could make all the difference on the day. We will sell tickets online from tomorrow morning and it will be great to see a big away support from Norfolk.

I firmly believe that clubs are dead without supporters, and we all need to stick together in good times and bad and hopefully this gesture will show our fans what they mean to us.

Many of you will know that we commenced legal proceedings on April 2, 2023 against our former manager Tommy Widdrington. It can now be confirmed that the parties have reached an agreement on confidential terms.

We have drawn a line under the rumpus, and we can now move on.

Today we welcome a big footballing name - and an ex-Football League club in Darlington to The Walks. They raise well over £100,000 from their supporters every year towards their player budget, get decent attendances and have an excellent chairman in David Johnston. 

Darlington are managed by Steve Watson who played over 200 times for Newcastle and over 100 times for Everton - under his guidance he steered Darlington to safety last season when many thought they were doomed for the trapdoor.  We were in a similar situation so know exactly how the Quakers were feeling and with both teams having turned the corner I am sure we will be in for an excellent although difficult game this afternoon.