It’s almost time for the return of the BFFA Cup!
🎺 Ladies and gentlemen 🎺
We can now herald the long-awaited return of the BFFA Cup.
As always, all 40 teams will be entered into the tournament. Good luck!
To do the draw for us, we have enlisted the hands of two A-List footballing celebrities – Joe Cole and Karen Carney – to pick the balls out of the bowl live on Monday evening from the beautiful Moss Rose Stadium in Macclesfield, the home of The Silkmen. The draw will be televised live on TNT Sports and Discovery+ (in the UK at least), and updated somewhere on TheFA.com too.
Okay… so we’ve not hired celebrities, but we are re-purposing the FA Cup 5th Round Draw for our own selfish ends. Hopefully you can forgive us for leaning on the FA for a smooth, quality, professional draw! They will be drawing sixteen numbers shortly before the Brentford match, and we will joyfully re-purpose the resulting order to determine the BFFA Cup fixtures. You can follow daily BFFA Cup updates here.
The order in which those numbers are drawn out on Monday will lay out the map for this season’s tournament. From that you will each be able to see your team’s route to the Final.
And here’s how we’re going to do it:
Round 1:
The teams ranked 25th – 40th in the Best-ish table after the conclusion of Gameweek 26 will be going into our First Round Draw. Team #25 will be matched against Ball #1, Ball#2 = Team #26, etc.
Currently (after GW25), BattleVAR Galático is ranked 25th on 1201 FPts. El Dude Bros sit 24th with 1233 FPts.
Round 2:
The FA Cup draw will pre-set the Second Round too. Ball #1 will be a placeholder for the team who finishes the week at the top of the leaderboard, #2 for second, #3 for third, etc., all the way down to 16. These top sixteen will be kept apart in the Second Round by each being assigned as the “home” team in a randomized fixture.
The “away” teams will consist of the remaining teams (teams ranked 17-24, plus the First Round winners) and they will be drawn against the top sixteen in reverse order of the FA Cup Draw (ie the last ball out will determine the first away team). If we didn’t do this then the away teams wouldn’t be randomized.
Their lotto numbers will be #1 – #8 for teams 17th – 24th, and #9 – #16 for the First Round winners (see the green stripey layout below).
Round 3 onwards:
You will see on the graphics that all the BFFA Cup fixtures are numbered by Round and the order they appear in. The Third Round fixtures will be randomised by the FA Cup Draw (Ball #1 = Winners of Match A2; Ball #2 = Winners of Match B2; Ball #3 = C2; #4 = D2, etc.). These pathways will be updated as confirmations are made (on the Cup Update page as before). From Round Three the tournament will follow a simple bracket to the Final.
Why don’t we know which BFFA teams have which number yet?
Normally we would, and at the start of the season we set Gameweek 26 to be the final ranking decider before the main Draw. This was to give every team the maximum opportunity to get as many points on the board as possible, and potentially earn a bye to the Second Round (by being in the top 24).
Unfortunately, as Wolves -v- Arsenal was recently rescheduled and awkwardly placed two days after the FAC5R draw, we won’t pre-emptively know who sits in which place until Thursday morning at the earliest. Nevertheless, daily updates will be made available for you in the handy link above.
Teams to Watch 🤩
Obviously, last season’s Cup winners will be top of this list as the holders and defending champions. Last season’s BFFA Cup was won by Mighty Fine when they beat Atletico Topo Chico 38-24. Mighty Fine also won the 2023 Final by beating All Star Gunners.
| Previous Winners: Season 1: SB Town UAOB Season 2: SB Town UAOB Season 3: Bigger Than Brolin Season 4: Tralfamadore Zoo FC Season 5: Smash & Grab Season 6: Abandoned | Season 7 Winter Cup: stilluvQPR Season 7 Spring Cup: Bigger than Brolin Season 8: The El Dude Brothers Season 9: Mighty Fine Feeling Season 10: StillluvQPR Season 11: Mighty Fine Feeling Season 12: TBC |
At time of writing, the four league leaders are: Housewives Favourite, The Phenoms, Whiskey De Bruyne and Beedle’s Boys. Between them, they’ve won 71/100 of their league games so far. Also beware of the Champions League Runners-Up – De Bruyne Trousers – who won 8 of their 9 CL games before being pipped at the post last week.
Some sides in the Association prefer knockout tournaments to league competition, so also look out for those historically good teams. Gnonto Seed are the team that was won the most Cup games without winning the title (17). The only teams with more Cup wins are Mighty Fine (19), Smash & Grab (19) and Bigger than Brolin (18). Smash & Grab have scored the most matchpoints in BFFA Cup history – 1479 FPts, over 100 points more than the next-best team (Gnonto Seed, 1333 FPts)!
And spare a thought for the teams that have gone all the way to The Final but didn’t lift the trophy – All Star Gunners (2023), Atletico Topo Chico (2025), Bigo1 (2018), East Loop United (2017), Gloopy Yarbles (2021), Gnonto Seed (2019), Hung Like a Bony (2024), Jaysokker (2022) and Sporting Wicker Park (2018).
For the rest of the season, the FA Cup will be woven through the fabric of the fantasy season with sporadic breaks, squad rotation and, of course, double/blank gameweeks. This final third of the season will be the most intense, requiring the most focus of the three parts (good luck with that!)
From the first round proper onward, there are no longer replays in the FA Cup. Games that are level after 90 minutes will be followed by a period of extra-time, and penalties if needed. And don’t forget to keep an eye on European competitions too.
Dates for your diary
As per The Draft Pack from the start of the season:
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