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Salisbury hit six to reach FA Cup second round for first time

Errol MayfieldPublished 16m ago2 min readBased on 12 sources
Salisbury hit six to reach FA Cup second round for first time
Photo by Anton Tupikin on Unsplash

Salisbury scored six goals against Sholing on Saturday to reach the second round of the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history. BBC Sport reported the result from the first-round tie, which kicked off at 3pm GMT at Raymond McEnhill Stadium.

The FA Cup is England's oldest knockout competition, open to clubs from the top of the professional game down to village sides that play on Sunday afternoons. Every round, the losers go home. Salisbury play in the National League South. Sholing play in the Southern Premier League South, and this was their first-ever appearance in the first round proper.

Salisbury arrived in good form. They had already won three qualifying-round ties this season, and scored at least three goals in each of them, 12 in total, according to The FA. In the previous round they beat Eastbourne Borough 3-0.

Sholing had their own story to tell. They won 2-1 away at Ebbsfleet United in qualifying, with debutant Jonas Makuna scoring the winner, as The FA noted at the time. Their most recent win came against SE Dons, a ninth-tier side that started life as a Sunday league team set up by the rapper Don Strapzy. Sholing won that one 2-0, and the SE Dons tie had been billed as a chance for a non-league side to earn a place in the first round.

The two clubs had met in this competition before. Fifteen years ago, Sholing beat Salisbury City, the name the club used before, in the second qualifying round.

For Salisbury, the win is a first step into new territory. Their supporters now know that their next opponent will come from the second-round draw. For Sholing, the trip ended in defeat, but the first-round run was still a first for a club that had never reached this stage before.

The FA Cup has always been good at this kind of story. A club that spends most of its season playing in front of a few hundred people can suddenly find itself on the same stage as the biggest names in the game. Salisbury's result gives their fans a new date to look forward to.

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