“We came here to play, not to survive”

The team sheet told you one thing; the first half told you another. Woking, of League One, began this FA Cup tie with seven of their usual starters missing from the squad and a goalkeeper making his first start in place of Gary Joseph. Fleetwood Town, a division below, arrived with a shape they have barely used this season and two centre-backs borrowed from elsewhere. The expectation was a home side managing a difficult afternoon. The reality was a fourth-tier team with 64 per cent of the ball and the calm of a side that believed it belonged.

For half an hour it was a puzzle. Woking sat deep, broke when they could, and Willie Brown went into the book early for a challenge that told you how the afternoon would feel. Fleetwood passed and passed — 572 completed of 638 — and found mostly blue shirts. Then, just before the interval, the game opened like a door.

The second half was a blur of goals. Joel Harper, who was replaced on 62 minutes and still finished with two goals and an assist, was at the centre of it. Saul Gourley, who went off on 65, had a hand in everything before that and completed 55 of 61 passes. Claudio Nacciarriti scored one and carried the ball through midfield as if the pitch were wider for him. Chris Lewis, playing as a right winger rather than his usual central role, scored and made one. Woking kept coming back — Jim Key with a goal and an assist and 13.9 kilometres in his legs, Jasper West scoring, Layton Cartwright arriving from the bench on 51 minutes to score and create. Three goals should have been enough for a home side in this competition. It was not.

Woking's bench had already been emptied by the time the substitutions began to change the shape of the game. Three changes at half-time, two more on 51 minutes, and a team that had begun cautiously was suddenly chasing a match it could not hold. Fleetwood finished in a different formation from the one they started, and by then the scoreline had its own momentum.

“We came here to play, not to survive,” Harper said afterwards, and the 4,686 inside the ground would have recognised the difference. Woking's players left to a smattering of applause and a good deal of quiet. Their manager will face questions about a selection that left so many regulars out on a day when the cup asked for them. Fleetwood, who beat Championship opposition in the Carabao Cup in August and were written about then as a surprise, will not be a surprise again. They are in the hat, and they earned it with the ball.