FA Cup countdown: Mountain climber

Northwich Victoria's manager, Steve Burr, could give Mick McCarthy advice on how to deal with adversity. His chance will come in Sunday's third-round tie

If Mick McCarthy is awash with feelings of despair about the six Premiership points his side have managed to muster this season, he could do a lot worse than seek a quiet word with the manager who will take up a seat in the opposition dug-out at Sunderland's Stadium of Light on Sunday.

Steve Burr had just taken over a Northwich Victoria side which managed four wins in the entire previous Conference campaign when the club went into administration in September 2004 and were deducted 10 points - leaving them on the princely total of minus seven. It is testament to his ability that Vics eventually finished nine points clear of the relegation zone and Burr headed for a well-earned rest on his favourite golf course in Staffordshire. He was halfway up a fairway when he received the call telling him that Northwich were to be relegated anyway, owing to a technical irregularity relating to the club's registration - so ending 26 unbroken years in non-League's top flight. The agonies are still etched on Burr's face when he relates all this. Don't let any Premiership manager tell you he is feeling hard done by.

"A few weeks into this job, I did ask myself what I had done," Burr admitted, as he went about preparing his team for Sunderland. "It was utter disarray. But in the final reckoning, I'd say the events of last season have strengthened our resolve. There's no reason why some of this bunch shouldn't be playing in the Football League but they have stayed here because there's a purpose; something to prove."

The side's record over the past five months bears this out. After a series of heart-to-hearts in which Burr persuaded his players to stay and give him one season to get them repromoted, the side raced to 11 wins in their first 12 Conference North outings and they had lost only once (to Hucknall, Burr's previous charges from Nottingham) before a couple of defeats over Christmas. In the FA Cup, there was the even greater satisfaction of eliminating Conference sides Morecambe, York and Woking, delivering Vics to Sunderland for a third-round pay day which has had Mid Cheshire remembering 1976-77, when its team dumped out the League sides Rochdale, Peterborough United and Watford before losing to Oldham Athletic at Maine Road in the fourth round.

The turnaround in the club's fortunes is all the more remarkable considering that Vics were insolvent and losing £5,000 a week when Burr took over. The troubles stemmed from the board's decision, in 2003, to leave their old 4,000-capacity Drill Field home for a new stadium which would satisfy the Conference's insistence on 6,000 capacity grounds (which was later lowered to 4,000.)

The club ran out of money for the new stadium, by which time they had sold the old one and were paying their old foes Witton Albion £1,500 a week to use their ground. Salvation arrived 18 months ago in the form of Mike Connett, a Manchester businessman and father of the Vics keeper, Ben, who has completed the stadium move.

If Connett's grand plan works, the chairman will start earning money by March from a nine-acre leisure development which will eventually include restaurants, bars, office blocks, a marina serving the Shropshire Union canal and Northwich Victoria - the "sexy part in the middle of it all," as Connett describes them. (This most doughty of non-League sides has not earned that kind of compliment too often down the years.) Connett has made money from the leisure industry but his indignation at Sunderland's decision to reduce the ticket prices for Sunday's match - to £10 with £5 concessions - illustrates how badly the non-League club need a pay day like this. "I told Sunderland that they're the ones carrying the debt, so what on earth did they want to go and do that for?" he said. "If we bring them back to our place it'll be £20 and £15."

No kind of money can buy the chance that the game represents for the right-sided Vics midfielder Jon McCarthy, who was capped 18 times by Northern Ireland and was a regular in Birmingham City's Championship side until he broke the same leg three times. He drifted out of pro football and has followed Burr from Hucknall to Northwich, now combining playing with a full-time job teaching sports science at the Mid Cheshire College, where he trains the academy team affiliated to Vics.

When McCarthy says that the Sunderland tie is one of his most keenly anticipated days in football, you know that it really must be a big one. He thought jangling nerves belonged in the past - to nights like 18 August 1999 when he lined up for Northern Ireland in a friendly against the world champions, France, at Windsor Park, which the Irish lost 1-0. It was McCarthy's birthday and he was desperate for a French shirt from the game, with the date on it. "The French marched straight off after the match so I walked into their dressing-room and said, 'Any chance of a shirt?'" he recalled. "[Marcel] Desailly asked, 'What's your number?' and there was a silence after I said, 'Number seven'. Then he said, 'Seven's good' and threw me his jersey. It was a good moment. I was just a skinny white lad. He could have made a right idiot of me."

For all his international games against Italy, France and Spain, the closest McCarthy has come to Wembley glory was an Anglo-Italian Cup runners- up medal, playing for Port Vale against Genoa 10 years ago.

It has been much the same for 28-year-old striker Paul Grayson, another member of the Vics' North-east contingent, who was signed on by Newcastle United but failed to progress under Kevin Keegan. The one-time England youth international has scored 40 goals in around 60 Vics appearances including two hat-tricks and player of the round awards in this season's FA Cup (the first time that has been done).

And then there is Keiran Charnock, who might have made it at Wigan were the club not chasing the Premiership dream. Charnock was so devastated by Paul Jewell's decision to release him that he dropped straight down to Northwich, where he is one of several players in the England non-League squad.

"We need to play out of our skins to get anything out of this but I just hope they can manage to enjoy it because, God knows, they deserve it," Burr said. "Just having Mick McCarthy in the other dug-out is a great prospect and something I can learn from."

Judging by the mountain Sunderland have to climb this year, the feeling might very well be mutual.