Plymouth Parkway ready for their 'FA Cup final' in bid to reach first round

When you think of football in Plymouth, the word 'Argyle' usually comes to mind.The League One leaders, founded 140 years ago, have plenty of pedigree in the English game.However, 'Parkway' might be about to enter a few more fans' lexicons if seventh-tier neighbours Plymouth Parkway can make the FA Cup first round for the first time this weekend.The Southern League Premier Division South side are one game away from having a chance to be drawn against their high-profile neighbours as they prepare for the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup.Victory would put them in the hat with their more established city rivals, whose 17,900 all-seater ground at Home Park is less than two and a half miles from Parkway's 3,500-capacity Bolitho Park, which has just 250 seats. "It's massive," says chairman Mark Russell, whose club began playing park football in 1988 but are now second in the seventh-tier and have hopes of reaching the English Football League with proposed Kuwaiti investment."Obviously from a history point of view it would be the first time we've done it, but also from a financial point of view you're obviously going in when big clubs are coming in and you've got the likes of Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth Argyle coming into the draw at that round."You just sort of think 'wow, there's an opportunity that we could be playing some of those teams in a real game as opposed to a pre-season friendly'."Parkway manager Karl Curtis is a Tottenham Hotspur fan, so knows all about FA Cup success. And while their status in the third tier of non-league football meant they missed out on some of the earliest qualifying rounds, his team have had a couple of tricky away ties against sides in the same league as them, before beating National League South side Horsham in the last round."We've gone to Gosport and we've had to win there, which isn't easy, we've gone to Frome Town on the back of the club having never beaten Frome before," he says."Then we've had Horsham who are in a league above us and beat them here."Now we play Chertsey here, it's going to be a huge game on Saturday, the challenge is just as big as Horsham, it really is, albeit that they're in our league, we know what they bring to the table."Because of where the club is at in step three, it's four wins and we've done three, so this is our FA Cup final."The last game we called it our FA Cup semi-final, but now it's all about getting to our FA Cup final and Saturday is our FA Cup final."So if Parkway are in Monday's first-round draw and Argyle are pulled out with them where would they like the game to be staged?"I think from a playing point of view probably here, but from a club point of view financially probably at Argyle," adds chairman Russell."You'd obviously like to have a home draw against anybody because it's our pitch and our lads know the pitch."But if you're going to play a big club, you probably want to play them at their ground, just for the experience for the players as well."