While the top clubs find it increasingly difficult to provide enough seats for their supporters there

While the top clubs find it increasingly difficult to provide enough seats for their supporters there is plenty of space on most terraces in the lower divisions. Thus, when the miracle happens and Hereford draw Tottenham in the Cup, hard decisions have to be taken. Does the club take the money? Or take the gamble? For Gravesend, with an inadequate ground and negligible chance of winning, it was an easy decision. At Hereford the equation was less clear cut.Peter Hill, the extrovert chairman, said: "Playing here we earn about pounds 30,000. Playing at White Hart Lane would have been worth about pounds 150,000.

They rarely get to see them in the flesh, but it is a Premiership shirt they wear in the playground or the pub, not an Endsleigh one.Whether this is regarded as pathetic or understandable it has serious consequences for a club such as Hereford. This was the spartan foyer of Edgar Street, humble home of Third Division Hereford United. It was an hour after the clubs had drawn 1-1 in Saturday's FA Cup third round, and more than 100 people were crammed into a room no bigger than a household lounge. Most of them appeared to be Tottenham fans...with Hereford accents. Oh, the loneliness of a small-town club. In this age of glossy football magazines, sports supplements and Sky TV, supporters can follow the over- hyped Carling darlings more easily than their local team.

It was a familiar scene, Teddy Sheringham fighting his way through the crowd, signing autographs, posing for photographs, smiling as he headed for the sanctuary of Tottenham's coach If the scene was familiar, the scenery was not. Substitutes not used: Farrelly, Carr, Spink (gk).Referee: K Cooper (Pontypridd).Man of the match: Jackson Attendance: 26,021 (at Villa Park).. Even when two up Little was imploring his team to use what should have been massive superiority in possession. It was a vain hope.Only Dwight Yorke reminded the admirable Jimmy Jackson, Peter Mortley and Matt Gubbins that they were playing against a team supposedly five divisions superior. And only when Tommy Johnson clipped a low shot inside the far post after 73 minutes did Gravesend finally accept what the bookmakers, who made them 20,000-l outsiders, predicted.Goals: Draper (2) 0-1; Milosevic (46) 0-2; Johnson (72) 0-3.Gravesend & Northfleet (4-4-2): Turner; Walker (Harrop, 79), Gubbins, Mortley, Lamb; Munday, Gibbs, Jackson, Blewden; Cotter (Best, 78), Powell (Gooding, 75).Aston Villa (5-2-1-2): Bosnich; Charles, Ehiogu, Southgate, Scimeca, Wright; Draper, Townsend; Johnson; Milosevic, Yorke. But Villa had not faced a non- League side since 1920 and will be hoping to avoid the experience for another three quarters of a century. Their passing frequently had the 5,000 Gravesend fans laughing derisively.As it was Villa's manager, Brian Little, could claim at the end that it was a job he was pleased to get over.