Round-Five Pairing With ‘What The Cutler Saw’ Connotations

Four weeks ago, we were talking about Wolves being drawn against a Blackburn side they hadn’t faced in the FA Cup since the 1960 final.

Now the spotlight is on a tie against a club they haven’t met in the competition for the small matter of 68 seasons – and what an inglorious Molineux occasion that was!

Not only did Third Division South Bournemouth beat the side who would win the League title for the next two seasons but they provided a photographer’s dream image after match-winner Reg Cutler had injured himself in bringing down the post on a run towards goal.

And the happenings of that late-January fourth-round afternoon in 1957 provided plenty as well for those who make their living behind a phone and typewriter rather than behind a lens.

That’s because the scorer of the only goal was a man of the Black Country – born in Rowley Regis and a former Albion man.

Much later, Reg Cutler even fathered a son, Gary, who spent several years on the Molineux playing staff without reaching the first team. Underlining the West Midlands football roots even more, the youngster grew up in a household in Penn in which the Cutler family provided digs over the years for Martin Patching, Gary Pierce, Mick Matthews, John Humphrey, Eddie Gould and Mick Collins.

So, as we start to contemplate Wolves’ first FA Cup clash with Bournemouth in nearly three-quarters of a century, we are also confronted by irony. The weekend before Cup combat (March 1 and 2), the same two sides meet in the Premier League at the Vitality Stadium.

This will be Wolves’ first FA Cup visit to what we used to call Dean Court since they won 2-1 there in the 1947-48 competition.

They have since lost a two-leg League Cup tie with these opponents (in 1998-99), Mark McGhee’s side drawing the away game 1-1 thanks to a Darren Ferguson equaliser and then being beaten 2-1 in the return a week later.

The long wait for a match-up with Bournemouth in this competition is nothing like as surprising as was the 65-year gap between ties against Blackburn. The Cherries have generally been much rarer opponents for Wolves over the decades, mainly because of being in separate divisions for long spells.

Tonight’s fifth-round draw broke another sequence of sorts….Wolves had been paired with clubs from the Championship six times out of ten in the two major knockouts, including the first two rounds of this season’s FA Cup and the clashes with Albion and Coventry last term.