The third round of the FA Cup is always a special day for football fans, when the big teams join in. Sadly, we haven’t joined in at this stage for the past four years but we’ve made it this season, and the White Army headed for Luton, the home of the Premier League Hatters.

Fortified by a full English breakfast at Norton Canes services, we arrived in good time to discover there were no pubs near the ground and the only place selling alcohol, the Birch Hill Conservative Club, was full. However, all was not lost as I met two ex-colleagues who are Luton fans and they invited me round to the home fanzone, where there was an excellent craft ale bar, from which we availed ourselves of some excellent Amber beer.

Kenilworth Road is an experience. My friends assured me they had made improvements to it - let’s just say I would not have liked to have seen it before! Their plans for a new stadium keep getting pushed back and it may be another five years before it happens. The stadium is in the middle of terraced housing and yes, away fans do enter through a house front and walk past other residents’ washing in their back yards. Any fans going by car had a small hike from their parking areas. Having said that, everything was very friendly and it was a good atmosphere, especially in the away end as we hoped we could put on a bit of a show and test ourselves against higher opposition.

Ian Evatt shuffled his pack, as usual, with Kyle Dempsey and Josh Sheehan in midfield, with Aaron Morley and George Thomason on the bench.

In the first half, we held our own very well with the best chance being Sheehan’s piledriver just over. After the break, Luton turned the screws. We had to defend for most of it, the post saving us once, and Nathan Baxter on several occasions.

We survived the novelty of a VAR investigation, for a possible penalty - to be honest, I think we can thank VAR for that one. But we stood our ground and very nearly snatched it at the death when Tim Krul nearly pushed the ball into his own net.

A draw was a fair result, and we can look forward to a shot at beating Luton on home turf.