The Maccabees Felix White goes on an FA Cup adventure that takes him from Penrith all the way to watching Crystal Palace beat Manchester City at Wembley

When a band goes on tour, they enter their own little bubble. They move from one town to the next, one stage to another, and are oblivious to what’s going on in the outside world.

That proved to be the case for ‘former’ Maccabees guitarist and Tailenders podcaster Felix White, when he and his two brothers Will and Hugo, along with Stereophonics drummer Jamie Morrison, took their band, 86TVs, on tour in 2024.

It was bursting out of that tour bubble that was the inspiration for White’s new book, where he goes to every stage of the FA Cup, from the extra preliminary round in August all the way through to strolling down Wembley Way in May – and on the way discovered how closely football and life are intertwined.

“I was disorientated,” White tells FFT. “On tour with a band, the only place you can judge the time of day or what day of the week it is, is at a service station.

“We were playing at Kendal Calling in the Lake District and were at a service station, and everyone there seemed to be going to watch football.

"We weren’t due on stage until after 6pm, so I looked to see if there was a match I could go and watch. It was the extra preliminary round of the FA Cup, so I thought that it would be good for me to get away and out of my head by going to see a football match, in the same way some people go to an art gallery or meditate.

“So I found out Penrith were playing Pickering Town and went along to the game on my own. The cab driver who took me to the ground was telling me all of these stories about when Penrith reached the FA Cup second round after beating Chester at home in 1981.

“After the game, I had a bit of a panic because I couldn’t get a taxi to take me back to the festival – I was worried that I wasn’t going to make it back for our stage time. In the end, the chairman of Penrith, Billy Williams, said he would give me a lift. Floods of stories came out on that journey and that was when I decided to write the book.”

The FA Cup had been a presence in White’s life ever since 1993, when he was just eight years old and watching the semi-final clash between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United on TV, then the all-day build-up dominating terrestrial TV on the cup final day.

White adds: “In one semi-final you’ve got the Sheffield teams, then the other was Arsenal against Spurs, so you had these two local derbies. You couldn’t have written a comic book more simple and engaging to attract your attention.

“In a way the FA Cup final was pretty much the first trials of social media, spending all day with people – watching Lee Dixon shave, watching Lee Dixon eat breakfast, getting on the coach with Lee Dixon, watching Lee Dixon get off the coach. You were beamed straight into the mundanity of a footballer’s life.

“What I also discovered was that the FA Cup provokes memories – it’s so nostalgic because at every club people are talking about some special moment in their lives that’s related to the cup.”

White’s book Whatever Will Be, Will Be: A Matter of Life and Football takes readers on a journey of heartbreak and elation from Penrith to Wembley, via Haywards Heath, Cray Wanderers, MK Dons, Crawley, Manchester City, Everton, his own team Fulham and the eventual winners Crystal Palace.

It’s more than just a football book though – touching on growing up, holding on to the past and how football connects everyone.

“I’ve tried to tell the story of what it’s actually like to watch football, good and bad,” he adds. “Not like how it’s analysed in the media or through a five-minute romantic TV edit. It’s a strange, unique book, a bit like the FA Cup.”

It’s also about White’s own personal journey from Cumbria to Glastonbury, dealing with being a ‘former’ Maccabees guitarist, through the grief and feelings towards the band he loved, to reforming and playing their first gigs in eight years.

A Maccabees reunion wasn’t on the cards when White started his adventure, much like fans not knowing where their team’s FA Cup run will take them.

Those journeys just go to show that in both football and life, the future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.