MOST games of football now provide excitement, especially when crowds are in attendance.

But the ones that you always used to look at on the fixture list straight away, were when you had the local derby games.

Places like Liverpool, Manchester and London have many of them of course, with Liverpool v Everton, Manchester United v Manchester City and about half a dozen London clubs – grounds are normally always full and sometimes the results can spring a surprise.

I have always said that along the south coast we have Saints, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Brighton.

I would like – and I’m not always supported on this – for all of those four teams to be in the same division, the top one of course would be the preferred one.

Imagine the excitement at those games? Especially if you win them all and prove you are the best team.

I often get talking to someone who supports a team in blue down the road. In all the years I was manager at Saints, we were only in the same division as them twice.

That meant four league games and, in addition, we had one cup game. I let them go on about their club and their team and I quietly end the conversation by saying ‘played five, won five’.

The reason I am mentioning all this is because on Sunday, Saints have Brighton at home. Of course, I don’t want Brighton to win the game, but I do hope they can carry on picking up points to survive the bottom three.

Lo and behold, next week we are at another of the four I mentioned – in the FA Cup at Bournemouth.

The sad thing is of course there are no crowds allowed in as we speak. Imagine the clamour for tickets for next week’s game if we could have a crowd because Bournemouth’s ground only holds just more than 11,000.

Naturally, Saints will be favourites for that anyway but as I’ve said also, look at the number of away wins that have happened in empty grounds.

Ralph will be reminding his team to win that one and then they can go to Wembley for the semi-finals.

One thing I do remember was two of the first foreign players to come to Saints in Ivan Golac, a wonderful full-back, and Ivan Katalinic the goalkeeper – their dream while living in Yugoslavia was to play in the FA Cup at Wembley.

Golac played in the League Cup final against Nottingham Forest in 1979 – he could not wait to get to the biggest ground in England.

Bournemouth of course, their priority will be promotion, have slipped up a bit recently but will still want to beat their neighbours and book a trip to Wembley as well.

But let’s not think too far ahead. Saints must take it one game at a time with Brighton first, we certainly want to get back on track after the big defeat at Manchester City.

I don’t think the result on Wednesday was a surprise to anybody in football, City having previously gone 21 games winning and lost just only four days before to their local rivals.

There was no way anyone would have expected them to lose two in a row, especially when they were playing at home.

Anyone watching the game would realise what a good team City are and are undoubtedly favourites to win the league. At least Saints got two goals against them away from home.

Of course, one was a penalty. As in my day we had David Peach and Matt Le Tissier as penalty kings, now we’ve got one of the best players in the whole division on penalties, set-pieces and free-kicks in James Ward Prowse.