What if they held a Battle of the Somme and no one came?

TV View: The trouble with the FA Cup is that ever so occasionally it doesn't quite live up to the pre-match hype. Take, for example, Southampton v Portsmouth on Saturday.

The impression was given that only the Iraqi elections would have tighter security surrounding them, that Southampton manager Harry Redknapp would be accompanied by a platoon of bodyguards to protect him from a blood-thirsty baying mob of Portsmouth fans and that the game was likely to have a Battle of the Somme quality to it.

In short, we were promised that all concerned were up for it.

This was the sequel to When Harry Left Pompey, moving 17 miles down the road to join Southampton, or, as Pompey supporters call their darling neighbours, "Scum".

The Bone brothers, Brendan (Portsmouth fan) and Phil (Southampton fan), were hired by the BBC to explain just why the rivalry was so, well, spirited.

The loathing, we were told, stemmed from Southampton dockers breaking a strike in Portsmouth several aeons ago.

"That's where 'scum' comes from," explained Brendan, "Southampton City Union Men." (This, we later learnt, is as accurate a legend as the one that claims Pele's parents named him after the Irish word for football).

Brendan then tried to think of an analogy to describe how he felt when he heard 'arry had moved to Southampton.

"It'd be like me girlfriend running off with me brother," he said. Phil nodded. He still hasn't forgiven Southampton legend Mick Channon for shacking up with Brendan (i.e., Portsmouth) for a brief spell near the end of his career. Twenty years ago.

(Pompey fans even have a song for 'arry now. To the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer it goes: "Harry, the red-nosed Judas, had a very shiny nose, and if you ever saw him, you would say he was a treacherous, two-faced, double crossing, scheming Scummer Judas". Enchanting).

So, the scene was set.

"One of the most intense sporting rivalries that exists," said Ray Stubbs, just in case we hadn't got the message.

"They're laid back people who suddenly put on this moron's suit and suddenly go absolutely crazy," explained ex-Southampton manager Gordon Strachan of the local folk.

"It's all lined up for a great game," promised Mick Quinn, former Portsmouth striker.

And then? Well, if you're cursed by insomnia get in touch with the BBC and ask them for a loan of a tape of Saturday's first half. The only trouble is you might never wake again. Or want to, in case you had to watch the second half.

Much of the difficulty stemmed from two facts.

One - of the 22 players who started the game, not one was born anywhere near Southampton or Portsmouth; two of them were from Sweden, two from Scotland, two from Senegal and one from the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Nigeria, Norway and Serbia and Montenegro. And the used subs were from Trinidad and Tobago, Sweden and Jamaica. They weren't, then, really up for it in a Battle of the Somme kind of way.

Two - Southampton played with one man up front. And he, Peter Crouch, is six feet, seven inches tall. If Brian Clough was tuning in on his heavenly telly, he'd have replayed that comment of his: "If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there."

What the BBC needed on Saturday were people expert in the art of filming Spitfires and the like at air shows, not football-specialist camera-men. For much of the game their cameras were pointed at the skies. When, we wonder, Elvis Costello penned that tune Pump It Up, had he Southampton, with Crouch on board, in mind?

"Is he more of a help or a hindrance to them," asked Quinn of Crouch at half-time, "because he may as well wear his boots on his 'ead".

Stubbs sprang to the defence of Southampton by pointing out that they did once keep the ball on the floor and almost scored, from Paul Telfer's long-range shot.

"Aye," said Strachan (who managed Telfer and was aware he hadn't scored in something like 17 years), "but if the referee knew Paul Telfer he really should have been booked for time-wasting for shooting - it was never going to be a goal".

Second half. More of the same. But at least there were goals, two thirds of them penalties. One scored by Crouch in the 94th minute. If only they'd passed to his feet before then.

Manchester United v Middlesbrough was, mercifully, marginally more entertaining. As Gary Lineker put it about the boy Rooney: "He'll be a good player when he grows up."