WHAT an FA Cup weekend. Even without Town being involved, it was wonderful.

Romance and magic filled the air with every shake of Robbie Savage’s mane - and the shakes of every head hearing his fruit machine of inarticulate cliché.

Few weekends since Paul and Debbie Daniels’ first date have jammed in so much romance and magic (and like the FA Cup, that also must have relied on the persuasive power of being on telly).

However, as the fairy dust settles, the reason for the romance appears. In the cold, cold light of day we can see how Jose Mourinho’s faux humility and Manuel Pellegrini’s jet-lagged calm hid relief from future fixture congestion, while Joe Hart couldn’t even be bothered to pretend. The truth is that the lack of cageyness in the matches came from a lack of care.

Even Leicester’s Nigel Pearson was in spell-puncturing mood. After his lowly team were denied a penalty, he hinted at how little the FA Cup matters. “There is no point ranting and raving about it,” he said. “However, these things can cost people their jobs. If it was a Premier League game which we lost because of a decision like that, maybe I would be talking a bit differently.”

Of course, knowing that clubs prize shiny shiny coins above tarnished cups couldn’t sully the weekend; it merely provides testament to how our love of football rises above. It always does.

We already know FIFA fiddles while Qatar burns under the midday sun, but we still watched the World Cup avidly. We know that we can’t hold onto this Swindon team in the face of other’s financial muscle, but we still travel home and away. We read every agent and Aussie paper trying to sell Town’s stars Down Under, but still delight in Massimo Luongo’s progress.

Back in 1994, Brazil’s then coach Carlos Alberto Pereira glibly said: “Magic and dreams are finished in football.”

And over the last 20 years he has been proven largely correct, but there are still weekends when romance and magic still have a place, just not a lot.