THE FA Cup gets underway in earnest this weekend and in my view it is still the greatest, most romantic cup competition in the world.

When the first round comes around, there is always the same sense of anticipation and excitement to that experienced on the opening day of the season.

The competition has taken a bit of a battering in some quarters in recent seasons, most notably when Manchester United withdrew from the competition because of their involvement in the World Club Championships in Brazil.

There is also the Wembley factor.

As a kid, you dreamed of playing in the FA Cup final at Wembley.

The final is now played at Cardiff and while not wanting to take anything away from the Millennium Stadium, Wembley and the FA Cup final just seemed to go hand in hand.

However, the FA have taken great strides in terms of prize-money this year to try and restore the competition's image and importance.

The incentive of extra-finances is there to add to the gate money the clubs share.

Certainly, the non-league clubs who have been playing in this competition since August have been rewarded in a big way financially.

I think the FA and the sponsors have to be applauded for that.

But while there is an incentive financially, as far as the supporters, the players and myself are concerned I'm sure the major incentive remains the glory above all else.

That is what makes the cup so special; the chance to claim a scalp of a higher division team, as we can on Saturday against Colchester.

Before the draw is made, everyone is asking what you want.

To be honest, unlike probably a lot of other managers, I would have preferred being drawn against a non-league club than a team riding high in Division Two.

I know it is a potential banana skin but as a manager I have never lost to a non-league team. We beat Radcliffe last year and at Hull while at Rochdale we beat the likes of Whitby, Whitley Bay and Marine so over the years non-league clubs have never proved to be a problem.

Ideally, you also want to be drawn at home but it is very much the luck of the draw. York City have not had much luck in that respect in recent seasons. Indeed, we have not had a home draw in the first round of the FA Cup since 1995.

It will be very tough for us on Saturday, indeed it couldn't be much tougher. It is a long distance to travel but we will be prepared in the best possible way.

We have had them watched in every game they have played since the draw was made and as far as preparation is concerned we will be doing everything we can to be ready for it.

It is a very similar position to last year when we faced Reading in the second round replay. I will be reminding the players of that, when after drawing at Bootham Crescent we surprised a lot of people by winning at the Madejski Stadium to go through to the third round.

I will also be reminding the players of what happened after we beat Reading and earned a third round trip to Leicester. The place was buzzing, we were in the headlines for a week and it is all part of the competition's magic.

People say it is a distraction from the league, but it is nice to have a little break from it and to get to the third round was a big lift for everybody. It underlined just how much the excitement the FA Cup can generate.

Certainly, I've been fortunate during my managerial and playing career to have experienced many great FA Cup moments.

During my time as manager at Rochdale we got to the fifth round and last 16 of the cup, the furthest it the club have ever got in the competition.

After beating Marine in the first round, we then beat Lincoln in the second, Whitley Bay in the third and Northampton Town in the fourth before finally losing 1-0 to eventual finalists Crystal Palace.

Interestingly enough, we played our first round match at Anfield because the Marine ground wasn't up to the standard.

As a player, I got to the quarter-finals with Huddersfield Town in 1972 when we played Birmingham.

The run to the quarter-finals included probably my biggest giant-killing as a player. We beat West Ham in the fifth round. They were in the First Division then and we were in the Second.

Nobody expected us to beat them. But the quarter-final proved a strange experience. I started off in midfield but ended up in goal.

Our goalkeeper got carried off with a broken leg and there was nobody else daft enough to volunteer to go in. We were 1-0 down when I went in and we finally lost 3-1. The disappointing thing was we missed out on a semi-final against Leeds.

But it is still a happy memory. There were 55,000 at St Andrew's and it was a tremendous experience.

And a story like that - getting to the quarter-finals and ending up in goal - just about sums up the FA Cup.

It always throws up the unexpected.