MIKE Alcock laughs when I ask him to talk to me about local lads lifting the Cheshire FA Amateur Cup.

“Are you sure you meant to phone me?” he quips.

“I wish I could tell you what it feels like.”

Except that is exactly why.

Barnton are the only Cheshire League team to have got their hands on the huge silver trophy in the past quarter of a century.

They have done so twice in that time; first in 2002, and again two years later.

Last season another club from Northwich, Rudheath Social, became the first to reach the final since the Villagers’ most recent success more than a decade ago.

In between, the cup has been permanent resident with a West Cheshire League team.

“Every year they have half-a-dozen sides that are good enough to win it,” says Alcock.

“It’s been that way for ages.

“That doesn’t mean there haven’t been strong teams in it from our neck of the woods, but since that Barnton one our sides haven’t been able to match theirs.”

That might change this term.

Two representatives of the Cheshire League, Crewe FC and Sandbach United, are through to the last four.

They could be joined by Knutsford – runners-up in 1990 – and Malpas, who take on Stockport Georgians and holders West Kirby respectively in last-four ties still to be played.

Of course, a single season is too small a sample to draw any conclusions about a transfer of power.

Alcock is Rudheath’s treasurer, and was assistant manager too for the early stages of a journey to the showpiece that ended in an agonising stoppage-time defeat.

“It’s one that got away,” he rues.

“Although we feel differently about it a few months on than we did on the night.

“To have even been there going toe-to-toe with a side like West Kirby, who had won three of the previous six finals, was an amazing achievement for a club that had only started playing Saturday football five years earlier.

“It’s changed how our lads look at the competition after going so close to winning it.”

To prove as much, newspaper cuttings of reports from the final adorn a wall at their home on Middlewich Road.

As it is, footballers from Northwich and Winsford have enjoyed more success in the Cheshire FA Sunday Cup since the turn of the century.

Oaklands won it in 2003, while Rudheath, St Joseph’s and Thatched Tavern have made five final appearances between them.

While acknowledging the West Cheshire League’s strength, Alcock says a generation of players have grown up without attaching the same value to the Saturday version.

He attempted to claim that crown, as number two to Terry Murphy, at three-time Cheshire League champions Middlewich Town.

But the Witches never progressed past the last eight.

“To those lads, it was just another competition,” he adds.

“When I played, it was talked about as the pinnacle a local amateur player could reach – it was our FA Cup.

“The more established Cheshire League clubs – say Barnton or Knutsford – always saw it that way.

“But as I got older, I could tell it didn’t mean as much to guys coming through.

“There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that – at Middlewich we wanted to establish ourselves as a force to be reckoned with, and winning league titles was the best way to do so.”

Of 47 entries for this season’s Cheshire FA Amateur Cup, 15 were from the Cheshire League.

Five of those reached the last eight.

Knutsford chairman Jimmy Evans says a win for his Reds in the final would feel ‘like winning the European Cup’ and, by implication, a measure of the league’s strength relative to its rivals.

Alcock concludes: “It’s a competition that has given me some great memories in spite of my record.

“I’d love for more players from the area to be able to look back on it as fondly.”