While Yeading versus Newcastle might have evoked the romance of the FA Cup, the immediate clamour to switch the game to a bigger venue was a salutary reminder that the competition is not averse to a quick fumble in the bushes instead.

Devalued by Manchester United's decision to swap 127 years of history for a bagful of FIFA loot in 2000, the self-styled 'greatest competition in the world' lost even more lustre when Farnborough were allowed to put pounds before principles in January 2002.

Drawn at home to Arsenal in the third round, the FA gave permission for the non-leaguers to decamp to Highbury instead of hosting the game at their own Cherrywood Road ground.

Farnborough were the winners - banking £500,000 from one afternoon's work - but football was the loser as a possible celebration of the game's versatility and vitality at grassroots level was replaced by a soulless one-sided romp.

The Conference outfit argued that by staging the game at Arsenal, they could secure their future for the next five years - a fatuous claim that was fatally undermined when the club almost went to the wall this April after struggling to pay an outstanding Inland Revenue bill of £65,000.

The whole affair stank but, thankfully, the FA have learnt their lesson and introduced new rules which make it much harder for clubs to switch the venue of cup games for financial reasons.

The temptation remains, as was witnessed on Sunday as Yeading's first reaction to the news they had been paired with Newcastle was to look into the possibility of transferring the game to St James' Park.

Even the normal platitudes about "milkmen facing millionaires" were usurped by cold calculations of profit and loss.

Once it became clear that wasn't going to happen, London neighbours Brentford and QPR were touted as possible grounds of convenience.

But, yesterday, Yeading secretary Bill Gritt confirmed the Ryman League Premier Division side are to try to host the tie on home soil at The Warren.

"We are going to look at the feasibility of staging the game at Yeading," said Gritt. "Now we've settled down, we're going to look at getting them down to The Warren and see where we go from there.

"We've had 4,000 there, but I think it's about 3,000 to 3,500 capacity with 250 seats. But we can pull in some portable seating."

With modern football rapidly losing its soul, the FA must do it all it can to support such a move if its premier competition is not to lose the little respect that remains.

Who knows? If the first weekend of January brings wind and rain, we might even see an old-fashioned cup-tie in an old-fashioned setting.

Not everyone will like it of course - Yeading boss Johnson Hippolyte argued the FA's intransigence had already taken the "gloss off the tie" - but the FA Cup is the only competition that could force the likes of Patrick Kluivert and Laurent Robert to trudge through the mud of The Warren, and therein lies its enduring appeal.

Instead of bemoaning his luck, Hippolyte should be following the lead of Stevenage Borough and remembering there is more than one way to get a game switched to St James' Park.

Stevenage held Newcastle to a 1-1 home draw in 1998.

By doing the same, Yeading, nicknamed The Ding, could enjoy their Tyneside pay day after all.