Plymouth Parkway are one win away from reaching the FA Cup first round for the first time in their history, with Southern League rivals Chertsey Town standing between them and a place in Monday’s draw.
The Southern League Premier Division South side, who play in the seventh tier, host Chertsey on Saturday in the fourth qualifying round. Victory would put them in the hat alongside the clubs entering at that stage, among them Plymouth Argyle, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday.
Argyle are the club most people associate with football in Plymouth. The League One leaders were founded 140 years ago and play at the 17,900 all-seater Home Park, less than two and a half miles from Parkway’s Bolitho Park, which holds 3,500 with just 250 seats.
“It’s massive,” said Parkway chairman Mark Russell. “Obviously from a history point of view it would be the first time we’ve done it, but also from a financial point of view you’re obviously going in when big clubs are coming in and you’ve got the likes of Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth Argyle coming into the draw at that round. You just sort of think ‘wow, there’s an opportunity that we could be playing some of those teams in a real game as opposed to a pre-season friendly’.”
Parkway began playing park football in 1988, are now second in the seventh tier and have hopes of reaching the English Football League with proposed Kuwaiti investment.
The two Plymouth clubs are familiar opponents: they usually meet at Bolitho Park in pre-season friendlies. In July, Argyle ran out 4-1 winners in their first game back from their summer break, with Will Sullivan scoring a first-half equaliser for the non-league side.
There is no doubt among the players about who they would like to face if they get past Chertsey. “Ideally Plymouth Argyle,” said 25-year-old midfielder Rio Garside, an experienced non-league player in the region who came up through Argyle’s academy ranks. “I didn’t make it to the first team, it would be nice to maybe play at their place, but I’d also love to play them here. It’s exciting and you go into work and you go to your family and they’re all excited and they’re all talking about it, but it feels like ages away and then it feels so close as well. I’m just really feeling excited and raring to go.”
Parkway’s top scorer Andrew Neal knows the competition well. The striker, affectionately known as ‘Rocky’, was part of the Truro City side that reached the first round in 2017, when they drew an away trip at then-League One Charlton Athletic. He scored his final goal for the Cornish club in their 5-2 final-day win over St Albans City that secured the National League South title on the last day of the 2024-25 season, and with it promotion to the National League, before leaving for Parkway in 2025. This season he has scored 10 goals in 11 league games, but none in the cup.
“These are the days that you’ll remember and when your football career is done and you look back, these will be the highlights that you talk about,” Neal said. “I was fortunate to play there with Truro in the first round against Charlton and I still talk about that now as one my career highlights and I only came on for 10 minutes. So if we can do that and if we can get through Saturday and we can get a big draw, it’s something that will stick with you for the rest of your footballing career and when you’re done and you look back on it, it will be one of your highlights.”
Manager Karl Curtis, a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, has seen his side navigate a difficult route to this point. Because of their status in the third tier of non-league football, Parkway missed some of the earliest qualifying rounds, but they won away at Gosport and away at Frome Town — a club Parkway had never beaten before — before beating National League South side Horsham at home in the last round.
“Now we play Chertsey here, it’s going to be a huge game on Saturday, the challenge is just as big as Horsham, it really is, albeit that they’re in our league, we know what they bring to the table,” Curtis said. “Because of where the club is at in step three, it’s four wins and we’ve done three, so this is our FA Cup final. The last game we called it our FA Cup semi-final, but now it’s all about getting to our FA Cup final and Saturday is our FA Cup final.”
If Parkway are in Monday’s first-round draw and Argyle are pulled out with them, the chairman would weigh the playing and financial arguments differently. “I think from a playing point of view probably here, but from a club point of view financially probably at Argyle,” Russell said. “You’d obviously like to have a home draw against anybody because it’s our pitch and our lads know the pitch. But if you’re going to play a big club, you probably want to play them at their ground, just for the experience for the players as well.”