ENGLISH FOOTBALL has become such a glossy, greasy enterprise, that anything which succeeds in popping its finely honed sense of self-satisfaction deserves to be welcomed like a long-lost relative.

Let us give thanks, then, for the Championship, the black sheep of the domestic football family which just gate-crashed one of the Football Association's red-letter occasions to such spectacularly boorish effect.

There are few more effective ways of making the sporting establishment squirm than claiming three of the four places in the FA Cup semi-finals - in family reunion terms it is akin to scoffing all the sausage rolls and accidentally setting fire to the white linen tablecloth - so the successes of Barnsley, Cardiff and West Bromwich Albion should have been welcomed by all who still believe in sport's capacity to empower the under-privileged.

Not everyone feels this way. For the slippery types who run our national game and want the rest of the planet to view England as some sort of footballing ideal - over-brimming with talent, cash and shiny stadia - the presence of three interlopers in the last four of the self-styled "greatest club competition in the world" could hardly have been worse timed.

It's not easy, after all, to flog the TV rights to markets besotted by the established top four when all you can offer by way of return is Barnsley versus Cardiff on a Sunday afternoon.

The domestic media is hardly helping, either. The unprecedented progress of three Championship clubs was greeted not by excitement but world-weary cynicism. Almost every major newspaper ran stories bemoaning the death of the FA Cup or claiming that because you can throw a flannel over every Championship club between the play-off fringe and the relegation zone, it therefore did not deserve to be taken seriously.

The truth is quite the opposite. There might be a yawning quality gap to the top flight, but there can be no disputing the fact that the Championship now boasts a level of competitiveness and unpredictability that the Premier League, that trinket passed around the top three with all the care of a spliff at a student party, can only dream of.

Reputation counts for nothing in the second tier. Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester City, Southampton and Coventry - all established top flight clubs within the last 10 years - are locked in a desperate battle for survival, while the trio who dived out of the Premier League last season have all struggled to cope with the rigours of their new surroundings.

In fact, the head of the table is an echo of a long-forgotten, sepia-tinted age, throwing up grand old names such as Bristol City, Stoke and West Brom: proud clubs with illustrious pasts but who have found themselves elbowed out of contention in the money-is-everything Premier League era.

Jostling up against them are even more painfully romantic success stories: Hull City, an exceptionally managed and passionately supported club, boasting three players on the cusp of playing in their colours in all four divisions; or what about Plymouth Argyle, that lumbering green giant of the south which finally appears to be awaking from its slumber under the expert guidance of the thoroughly likeable Paul Sturrock?

Set against these stirring feats, the poutings and posturings of the Premier League elite, with their nauseating salary demands and uncontrollable egos, appear even more irrelevant and irritating than usual.

In a utopian vision of the future, the Championship would simply be allowed to get on with its business - day-dreaming of the play-offs one week, fretting about relegation the next - while the Premier League stayed sniffy and aloof, some posh gentlemen's club with a strictly enforced "No plebs" door policy.

Sadly, the real world - or the one created by 22 greedy chairmen in 1992, at least - doesn't work like this. Sooner or later, Football League players who see their Premier peers grow fat on an endless diet of Grand Slam sundaes and bulging endorsement contracts begin to develop their own rumbling tummies.

At my own club, Crystal Palace, we have reached a situation where a 16-year-old with only a handful of first team appearances to his name will not even contemplate sitting down to negotiate a longer term contract without first affiliating himself to a suitably high-powered agent. John Bostock is now on the books of Key Sports Management, the firm who negotiated Theo Walcott's move to Arsenal, and is currently not being considered available for selection.

Bostock will leave, of course. So, eventually, will all our other bright young talents - that is the way of things at a Championship club, even one with pretensions of being a Premier League regular. The story is a sad one, which is why moments such as the weekend's semi-finals need to be cherished, even if they are only fleeting.

"There might be a yawning quality gap to the top flight, but there can be no disputing the fact that the Championship now boasts a level of competitiveness and unpredictability that the Premier League can only dream of