Michael Ramsay explains why Sunderland will have to overcome their poor recent FA Cup history when they take on Fulham in the fourth round of the competition on Saturday

IT will be a crisp January morning at the Stadium of Light this Saturday. The dew lining the grass will not be long condensed when both Sunderland and Fulham take to the field to do battle in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

The red-and-white scarves will once again be out in force, and Sunderland supporters will be in full voice as they urge their team to sweep aside their lesser opponents and march onwards.

Memories of a Wembley day out in the Capital One Cup final last season are still fresh in the memory of Sunderland supporters, but they will also know only too well that success in the FA Cup has proved so elusive in recent years.

To put it into context, this will only be Sunderland's 22nd FA Cup game since the surge to the semi-finals under Mick McCarthy’s stewardship in 2004.

There have been just 11 wins in this competition since the quarter-final victory over Sheffield United that season. They have progressed past the fourth round on just two occasions, reaching the quarter-finals under both Martin O’Neill and Gus Poyet.

To put an even bleaker spin on it, aside from the semi-final defeat to Millwall at the Millennium Stadium eleven years ago, those duel quarter-final appearances were the furthest the Black Cats have gone in the competition in the last 23 years.

Between 1993 and 2003, there were two fifth-round exits, but that would prove to be the furthest that Sunderland would journey into the competition for the entire decade.

It didn’t always used to be like this. While the competition is loved in this country for many reasons, Sunderland supporters have a special affinity with the cup, with their club having lifted it on two occasions in the past.

While their 1937 success is consigned to the archives and the memories of the game’s seasoned veterans, it is the 1973 cup victory over Leeds United that still captures the imagination on Wearside.

With the Black Cats plying their trade in the second tier of English football, the clichéd ‘magic’ of the cup struck in the final as they toppled Don Revie’s high-flying Leeds.

They have since failed to add to their modest silverware cabinet, and would have to wait until 1992 to make another appearance in the FA Cup final, again as a Second Division club. While a Tim Cahill strike, so often a scourge of the Black Cats, deprived them of another final appearance in 2004, they would have to wait eight seasons to even get past the fourth round.

For a competition that is close to the club’s heart, it has inflicted a barrage of pain on supporters in the interim years. Last season’s 3-0 defeat at Hull City deprived Poyet’s side of a semi-final berth.

Early round defeats against the likes of Notts County, Portsmouth, Preston North End and Brentford have sent Sunderland supporters home with hopes of a cup final dashed for another year. It’s a damning indictment of their poor recent history in the competition that these so-called ‘cup shocks’ have become the norm on Wearside.

It’s not as though the FA Cup is an esoteric tournament reserved for the so-called ‘elite’ sides to regularly contest in a Wembley showdown. In the last five years alone, the final has hosted the likes of Portsmouth, Stoke City, Wigan Athletic and Hull City.

Before them West Ham, Cardiff City and Portsmouth again, gave their fans a big day out. Sunderland supporters will have been seething as these perennial strugglers advanced in the cup, while their club struggled.

Perhaps there has been a mind-block in the North-East with regards to this competition, with Sunderland's Tyne-Wear rivals enduring a similarly bleak time in the early rounds as of late. A fear of failure, coupled with the ever-increasing pressure at the Stadium of Light and the priority of Premier League survival.

The last ten years have certainly not been a walk in the park for the Black Cats, with managers tasked with rehabilitating the proclaimed ‘worst sides of the Premier League era’. Perhaps it’s no wonder that the cup has been put on the back-burner.

However, maybe the Black Cats are turning a corner. While the third-round exit at home to Bolton Wanderers in 2013 was underwhelming, Sunderland’s two quarter-final appearances in three years were encouraging.

Poyet has shown that he is a manager with ambitions of winning silverware, as he took both cup competitions very seriously last season despite the ever-lingering threat of a relegation dogfight.

While the days of Bob Stokoe are long gone, perhaps his heir at the Stadium of Light can draw on his influence and lead the club to their first piece of silverware in over four decades.