Last season’s defeat at this stage for The Rams at the hands of Crawley Town still stings in these parts – well, it’s hardly surprising.

Derby County 1-0 Crystal Palace

 7 January 2012, Pride Park Stadium

 A high profile club playing at a level below where they ought to be, a wild, windy night which is always likely to prove the great leveller and the game broadcast live to dozens on national television just screamed out ‘Cup Shock’ – but it was not to be – Crawley won.

This year, the third round draw paired Derby with Crystal Palace, a club whose honours board contains such meritorious entries as promotion to the top flight on no less than six occasions in the last four decades, to be followed shortly afterwards by relegation to the second level on the same six occasions.

It was in the FA Cup though that true glory so nearly came their way, when in 1990 Palace led twice against Manchester United in a thrilling final which finished 3-3. Predictably, the replay went pear-shaped when Lee Martin netted for the Red Devils in the second half.

The Eagles – no-one is quite sure why Crystal Palace have managed to acquire that particular nickname – currently stand just one step away from Wembley in the Carling Cup with a forthcoming tie against the Bluebirds of Cardiff City, so it was no surprise that Dougie Freedman had that fixture more in mind when he named a decidedly second-string side to take on The Rams.

Nigel Clough had the luxury again of being able to name an unchanged side, with fit-again but soon to be injured-again Nathan Tyson managing to hobble as far as the bench before collapsing. A word at this stage about the bench – spare a thought please for Tom Glick and GSE who have to find first-team squad payments for an extra two players during FA Cup matches.

The referee for the clash was none other than RAF Sergeant Darren Drysdale, the very same person who officiated when the Rams were eliminated from the Carling Cup during an unforgettable first-round encounter at the hands of mighty Shrewsbury Town earlier in the season, and the less said about that the better.

Regular readers of Old One-Eye’s Match Report will instantly realise that the level of excitement and skill on display during the game itself is inversely proportional to the length of the pre-match preamble, and this being no exception, the match report may follow below – somewhere.

A word at this time about coincidences – when Old One-Eye and the Memsahib finally arrived at their regular seats on the back row of the North Stand, this correspondent was dumbstruck (there’s a first time for everything) to find none other than THE BOSS – a Coventry City supporter from no less than fifty miles away - sitting in the very next seat. The bad news is, there goes any chance of me claiming Saturday as overtime. The good news is, there goes his chance too.

The crowd was so sparse that occasional visitors to Pride Park could have been forgiven for thinking that they were at The City Ground when the referee finally got proceedings under way, and the home side were immediately into their stride. The early stages were a Great Exhibition of passing football from Derby, which I suppose is as good a way as any for mentioning the original Crystal Palace and the links that structure and its construction had with Derby and its environs.

It was none other than the head gardener at Chatsworth House, Joseph Paxton, who designed the Crystal Palace which was originally erected in Hyde Park - which of course rhymes with Pride Park – in 1851. Coincidentally, although not quite as coincidentally as unknowingly sitting next to your boss on his first ever visit to Pride Park, the Crystal Palace was 1,851 feet long. Equally coincidentally, that is approximately equal to Coventry City’s average home attendance nowadays.

Derby penned Palace back deep in their own half for long periods, and it was no surprise when neat play by Craig Bryson and Jamie Ward down the left gave Theo Robinson the chance to put the Rams into the lead in the tenth minute. Well, I say ‘no surprise’ but that’s not strictly true. Last week at Hull, Theo took four swings at the ball before beating the keeper. Today, it took a mere three before former Ram Lewis Price was beaten – tangible improvement if ever I saw it.

Twice in the next few moments Price saved again from Robinson and Paul Green as Derby threatened to bury the visitors and it took almost twenty minutes before Palace mustered any sort of an effort on the home goal when Antonio Pedroza skewed his shot horribly wide.

More good work in the Palace goal by Price kept the visitors in the contest as time after time shots rained in on his goal with Ward running riot down the left. Bryson too was quick to get forward, but the second goal which just might have opened the flood-gates against Palace’s second string continued to elude Derby.

Occasionally Palace made progress, usually through carelessness by John Brayford who was having a decidedly dodgy spell, and Stuart O’Keefe did manage to draw a save out of Frank Fielding from long distance. Fielding appeared to be wearing an old pair of Stephen Bywater’s boots if the standard of his kicking under pressure was anything to go by, and three times his badly mis-hit clearances nearly landed the Rams in trouble, but each time Derby regained both the ball and their composure.

Palace improved somewhat during the second half, but Derby’s back line remained impenetrable despite the occasional forays forward by Palace. I should point out that one of the things that the original Crystal Palace was famous for was a collection of rather poorly constructed dinosaurs that had seen better days. In keeping with that fact, Palace manager Freedman brought on Steffen Iverson for the last half hour.

This being a day of coincidences, it should be noted that the dinosaurs which ruled this planet were destroyed around 65 million years ago, when Iversen was still at Tottenham. They were wiped out by a meteorite that struck in the region of the Yukatan peninsula, Central America. Equally coincidentally, Mr Iverson is looking a little bulkier nowadays, to the extent that when he falls over, he leaves an impact crater of his own.

Derby nearly made it two mid-way through the second half when a Ward corner was met by the head of Green, but once again Price saved well. Palace, whose minds seemed to be elsewhere, never seriously threatened Fielding, but Derby still found themselves under a bombardment of high balls and corners in the closing minutes which Shaun Barker and Jason Shackell dealt with comfortably.

A mercifully short two minutes of stoppage time was hilariously interrupted by the ever-unreliable Theo (bless him) Robinson in best ‘failing to trap a bag of cement’ form, trying unsuccessfully to run down the clock near the corner flag. A turn, a shimmy, a step over the ball, a subsequent step on the ball and a resultant goal kick with no defender within yards of him summed up the second half.

Unused subs: Legzdins, Naylor, Doyle, Tyson, Maguire, Davies B.

Crystal Paralysis: Price, Ramage, Dumbuya, Egan, Garvan, O’Keefe, Wright (Sekajja 76), Andrew, Parsons, Pedroza (Iverson 65), De Silva (Cadogan 55).

Unused subs: Winter, Fitzsimons, Parr, Daniel.

Attendance: 10,113 (628 unemployed window-cleaners).

Referee: Darren Drysdale (Lincolnshire).

Old One-Eye's Man of the Match: Craig Bryson – industrious.

Photo: Action Images

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