Worthington Cup is small beer

I must say that Paul Dempsey and Peter Taylor, the men who introduced Sky Sports' coverage of last night's match between Leyton Orient and Birmingham, were doing their best.

"The Worthington Cup is a competition that has refused to die," offered Dempsey.

The cynic in me was tempted to suggest that it may have refused to die, but it has experienced a disconcerting number of reincarnations, which suggests that someone is trying to do away with this unlovely baby.

Apparently, I was wrong on this. Leyton Orient were desperate to win, because they'd had a wretched start to the season, and a result in a game like this would, er, perk up their season no end. Alas, they went down 3-2 to Birmingham.

Paul Brush, the O's manager and one-time performer at Upton Park where he was often confused with his namesake Basil, put fire in the veins of his team by suggesting that last night's semi-televised game would gee them up because it was a great chance for their mates to watch them on the box.

Even more urgently in search of a place in the next round were Birmingham, still smarting at the bitter disappointment of last year's final.

Manager Steve Bruce, a solid favourite in South London after his mild flirtation with Crystal Palace, arranged his mouth into a most attractive rictus and announced that "places like this set you on the road".

To this end, he had rested his entire midfield. In fact, only three of his men on the pitch had played in the last Premiership match. Which road was he set on, I wondered? Perhaps it was the road to an early and welcome perdition.

There were, it must be admitted, some entertaining moments. A "privileged look" into the O's dressing room before the kick-off showed the presence of a couple of tactics charts pinned to the wall that might have been the ones used by Andy Gray before he graduated to the electronic stuff.

Then there was Rob Hawthorne on Birmingham's Stan Lazaridis: "The Australian must feel quite at home at Brisbane Road." Ha ha.

Terrific stuff, but not even a "close-run" encounter between a Third Division side and a team of reserves could for a moment disguise the fact that the Worthington Cup is small beer.