OPTIMISTIC Shots boss Danny Searle has admitted he would love to leave a legacy as Aldershot Town set out on the FA Cup trail tomorrow.

The Shots can put the trials and tribulations of league football behind them for 24 hours as they head to Kent to take on high-flying fellow National League side Bromley in the fourth qualifying round.

And Searle, a West Ham fan, understands the importance of a cup run to clubs and supporters alike.

“When you go into coaching and management you spend less time supporting teams, more and more trying to develop teams,” he said, “and I would love to give the fans something to look back on in five, ten, 15 years’ time and go ‘wow, do you remember that year?’

“From the fans’ perspective, that’s the romantic side of the cup, you remember those cup wins.

“Those sort of runs stand your club in good stead. If you manage your money properly, if you look after it and invest it properly it can set your club up. The FA Cup can leave a massive legacy. Even just getting through to the next round puts a little bit of revenue in the pot and that’s what we all want.”

By his own admission, Searle’s own flirtation with the FA Cup has been a pretty fleeting one, with a penalty miss while playing for Barking in the qualifying rounds in 2000 a somewhat dubious highlight.

But he still loves the competiton.

“Who doesn’t love the FA Cup? I think in most people’s early memories of football, the FA Cup comes up in it somewhere.

“It’s a fantastic competition. It’s withstood a lot of turmoil in the sense of people saying that once the Premier League becomes the juggernaut that it has that no-one is going to care about the FA Cup, but it’s been proven that that’s not true. Every year Wembley is sold out, every year the big teams want to win it, and that’s the judgment of how good the competition is.

“We want to go as far as we can in every competition we’re in this year so we’ll be giving it our all and trying to be as strong as we can be on Saturday.

“This club has had some great cup runs and played some big clubs, such as beating West Ham and playing Manchester United at home. If you’re in it, you’ve got a chance. Some teams have a better chance, for others it’s a bit slimmer, but if you’re in it you’ve got a chance. It’s like the lottery, if you buy a ticket you could win it. For this round of the cup we’ve got a ticket and we’re going to try to win it.”