Macclesfield Town - 0 West Ham Utd - 3: Newport county, Wrexham, Mansfield Town, Torquay United, Swansea City, Tranmere Rovers: the memories of West Ham's most ignominious FA Cup moments may still wake their supporters in the dead of night but Macclesfield Town was not added to the list. The club's notorious susceptibility to lesser lights survived yesterday's lunchtime start.
Certainly there was suffocating potential for humiliation. "The three-times winners against the three-times third-round losers," the public announcer had teased before kick-off. "There can be only one outcome, can't there?"
Ultimately, he was right. Yet until Jermain Defoe soothed West Ham's nerves with the opening goal just before half-time an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu had been descending over the small, open terrace accommodating the visiting fans.
At that stage Macclesfield had posed the more potent attacking threat but once Defoe had got the slightest of touches to Sebastien Schemmel's right-wing cross the possibility of Macclesfield retrieving the situation seldom reared its head.
"I think 3-0 is harsh," said Dave Moss, the home manager. "For 44 minutes we had them on the hook - lots of pressure, lots of set pieces, lots of ricochets around their penalty area. We certainly did not look like a side fourth from bottom of the Third Division playing Premiership opponents."
The consolation will come in financial terms. Macclesfield will accept £265,000 million sterling in television revenue which, with gate receipts and monies for reaching the third round, will be a godsend for a club of their stature. It is no exaggeration to say the biggest winners yesterday were the club's accountants.
What price a place in the fourth round? Moss looked back with some anguish to a number of half-chances, most notably when David James tipped over Rickie Lambert's deflected free-kick on the half-hour, and television supported his theory that the same player should not have been ruled offside before Richard Tracey's disallowed early header.
Any lingering sympathy was tempered, however, by the culpability of his players eight minutes from time after Chris Byrne took exception to John Moncur's attempts to hoist him from the ground after the West Ham midfielder had scythed him down.
What followed next was a throwback to the worst excesses of the Macc Lads. "I got two yellow cards and a head-butt in the space of 30 seconds," Moncur said afterwards. Jeff Winter also felt compelled to book Christian Dailly and Macclesfield's Danny Adams, but how the referee failed to take action against Byrne remains a mystery.
By then West Ham were already in a comfort zone created by a classy second for Defoe, the teenager punishing Macclesfield's defenders for backing off in the 73rd minute with a curling finish from 20 yards.
To see the 19-year-old excelling suggests that life after Paolo di Canio might not be so depressing after all and that notion was further enhanced three minutes after Moncur's exit when Kevin Keen lost the ball inside his own half and the outstanding Joe Cole drove a diagonal shot beyond Steve Wilson as Macclesfield's defenders hesitated.
MACCLESFIELD: Wilson, Hitchen, Macauley, Tinson, Adams, Keen, Priest (Ridler 72), Byrne, Lambert, Tracey (McAvoy 65), Glover. Subs Not Used: Martin, Whittaker, Munroe. Booked: Adams.
WEST HAM: James, Schemmel, Dailly, Repka, Winterburn, Sinclair, Cole, Hutchison (Foxe 84), Moncur, Kitson, Defoe. Subs Not Used: Hislop, Todorov, Minto, Courtois. Sent Off: Moncur (82). Booked: Schemmel, Dailly, Repka.Goals: Defoe 45, 72, Cole 85.
Referee: J Winter (Stockton-on-Tees).
