SOME of the greatest moments in Bolton Wanderers' history may never have happened had it not been for FA Cup replays.

Imagine for a second that Bruce Rioch’s Super Whites never had the chance to go to Anfield to beat holders Liverpool in 1993, or to Arsenal or Everton a year later to put two more chapters in the White Hot canon.

Had replays been abandoned, Wanderers would never have battled Newcastle United over three thrilling games in 1976, and their run to lift the trophy against Manchester United in 1958 might well have ended in the fourth round at York City.

None of those great stories would have been told, and countless more besides. And yet the possibility of making all FA Cup ties past the third-round stage one-off affairs is now looking a depressingly ominous one.

Wanderers became only the second team this season to stop Luton Town scoring on Sunday, doing something that Liverpool, Manchester City or Arsenal failed to do. And for their reward they get a replayed game which could earn them upwards of £200,000, depending on the result.

A replay adds a seventh fixture to Bolton’s January. They are already halfway through a 46-game season and in the knockout rounds of the Bristol Street Motors Trophy.

Luton, by contrast, now face four games in the same month. They have had to bring back an important relegation six-pointer against Burnley to Friday, January 12, but provided their trip to the Toughsheet is scheduled for the following Tuesday they would still have a fortnight’s break before their next fixture at home to Brighton.

To his credit, Hatters boss Rob Edwards didn’t complain to anything like the degree other Premier League managers did about having to do it all again in the cup, even though plans for a warm weather training camp in Dubai have now been truncated slightly. First world problems indeed.

Thomas Frank, Nuno Espirito Santos even David Moyes have all bleated about playing another game of football when they failed to get the job done first time. Each of these men has a first team squad that most lower league managers would swim to Abu Dhabi to possess, backed-up by Category One and Two academies with young players who often rely on the EFL clubs to get their experience.

Premier League sides have long since shown where their priorities lie, don’t buy that rubbish about respecting the tradition of the FA Cup. The League Cup is already a lost cause filled with squad players until the latter stages – and those managers who want out of the cup pick sides to make it happen. Sam Allardyce was quite adept at that sort of thing back in the day and didn’t hide his reasons.

If this is about player welfare then shouldn’t these clubs be using the squad available to them, blooding youngsters and giving their top talents some extra time off, if that is what they need?

The EFL has already sold out its only cup competition to allow the rich teams a nursery sandbox for their toddlers to play in the early rounds. If the FA would rather do away with replays and cut off yet another revenue stream for lower league clubs, then why not go the whole hog and let the elite lot ‘do a Manchester United’ and pick and choose which years they enter?

Wanderers have been on that side of the fence, hell, the club’s late chairman Phil Gartside even suggested the possibility to stopping relegation from the Premier League altogether at one point, foreseeing the skewed economy it had created.

Some time (12 years, to be exact) out of the spotlight, three more relegations, an administration, and Jim White smiling next to a whacking great countdown clock on Sky Sports ticking down to the moment your club becomes extinct will give you a different perspective on things.

Some say extra time and penalty shootouts add to the drama, and given the way Nathan Baxter was playing, maybe a few of the 1,640 who travelled down to Luton would have fancied Bolton’s chances. But on the whole, the financial rewards offered, even to a club with a relatively big turnover for the third tier of English football, are not to be sniffed at.

The days of second and third replays, and neutral grounds, are sadly long gone. But the unbridled joy of being a lower league club forcing a replay at one of the glamourous grounds should not be taken away, especially for non-league teams, for whom the money on offer can be transformative.

Bolton will feel their replayed game at the Toughsheet will be a completely different proposition to the one at the tight and partisan Kenilworth Road. And make no mistake, Luton won’t fancy a cold Tuesday night in Horwich over 25deg C in Dubai either.

Instead of revelling in a job well done, or extoling the virtues of his hard-working side, Ian Evatt spent much of his post-match press conference on Sunday evening pleading for parity from football’s rule-makers, be it on the use of VAR or full-time officials.

“The Championship, League One and League Two is just as important as the Premier League,” he told the assembled journalists.

Wouldn’t it be great if, just once in a while, someone on the other side of the fence said the same thing?