IT should be the best day of the year but following dismal recent showings, our first (and usually last) outing in the FA Cup has turned in to one of the most stressful and talked about weekends in our season.

Ahead of kick off, we should be dreaming of the possibilities. Back in the day, the dream would be to make it to the third round and secure a possible tie against a top Premier League side or maybe one of the big three North-East clubs. These days, simply winning a game feels a touch optimistic.

It’s not just our poor showings in the competition that has eroded some of its mystique. The whole competition feels like it has been marginalised. Sadly, the disregard of the competition was not the sole domain of our former manager. It feels like the whole country has downgraded the once legendary cup competition. Gone are the days of a whole Saturday being set aside for nothing but the FA Cup final. Instead it’s just another game on any given Saturday at an inconvenient early evening time rather than its traditional 3pm kick off.

Of course, these days it’s all about money and that’s not just for the big boys who inevitably battle it out at the business end of the competition. Even at our level, money matters. In fact, if anything, it matters much more than it does for a Manchester City or a Chelsea. Should we win Saturday’s tie with Bradford (Park Avenue) we will receive £9,000. While that amount probably wouldn’t get us an hour of Alexis Sanchez’s time, it would stretch a lot further for us.

The likelihood is it would cover all of our wages for a week. It probably doesn’t sound that impressive and I’m sure some fans of clubs that don’t have to worry about where every pound is coming from will have a sneer at it, but when your club doesn’t have a sugar daddy who can top up the funds when cash is needed, £9,000 is massive.

Standing in our way of the money is Bradford (Park Avenue). With Bradford sitting fourth in the league there will be some who view this as a difficult game but I’m feeling confident. Let’s face it the draw could have been a lot worse.

A home draw is always positive. A home draw against a side who we’ve beaten four times out of four since promotion to the National League North is even better. A home draw against a side that has gone slightly off the boil following a good start to the season helps. They’ve not won in three, losing two of those games. While our form is hardly anything to write home about, swinging wildly between good performances and head-scratchingly poor performances, we're unbeaten in two with two clean sheets. We have a platform from which to build and a win in the cup could properly kick start our season.

There is another positive which appears to have finally swung in our favour. Since our imposed two-year exile from the competition, we have been knocked out each year by a side from the NPL whether they were Premier Division or Division One North. With the only win in the Cup since our 2014 return coming against West Auckland, the NPL has had a full on hoodoo over us. Blyth, Hyde, Lancaster and South Shields all bettered us. While the defeats to Blyth and Hyde were no real disgrace, our feeble exits to Lancaster and South Shields really stung.

The club has a much different look and feel compared to when South Shields humbled us. Hopefully, even if it’s just for a few more weeks, a win on Saturday would allow us to start to dreaming about the FA Cup once again and bask in its magic.