But he says League is the priority

Anthony Griffith is looking forward to representing the Vale in the fourth round of the FA Cup on Saturday, the first time he and several of his team mates will have gone this far in the competition.

Although he concedes that the bread and butter of league football is perhaps more important, he is excited about the prospect of playing against Brighton & Hove Albion here at Vale Park this weekend.

He says: “We are looking forward to the FA Cup game and it is a good time for us. We would like to keep the momentum going in respect of winning games and remain focussed.

“Many players haven’t been in this position, playing in the fourth round of the FA Cup, so it is good for the players and good for the club as well.

“We will be seen as underdogs, but being at home will give us an advantage. It has to be better than going down there and playing in that new stadium against a Championship side.

“Being the underdogs doesn’t really bother me to be honest, I will just be going into a game and trying to battle and win the game and trying to keep that momentum going that we have.

“It is good to see people around the area talking about us going into the next round. We have been putting a smile onto people’s faces because it’s not all roses around Stoke on Trent at the moment.

“I think it is important for any football team to maintain a winning mentality and for them it will probably just be a stumbling block, they will just want to get the game out of the way because it is all about the focus on the league.

“But it is important for clubs to get through the rounds, but I think the main priority for any team at this stage is the league, for sure, but it is nice to be in the FA Cup.

“Not many people at our level have got this far in their careers and it is fantastic to put on your CV at the end of the day and it is good for the fans to see we are still in the hat.

“It is all about who wants it on the day, it is about their approach as well as ours. This is going to be a proper FA Cup tie where it is going to be ‘over our dead bodies’.

“It will be an FA Cup tie where ‘we want to win it more than you’ type of thing, roll your sleeves up and go into battle.

“I have never been as far as this in the competition so I am excited and there is an opportunity there to get into the next round. It is there if we want to grab it.

“I know they are fantastic passing team, but we have played fantastic passing teams before and at the end of the day everybody is human. We are men on the pitch - nobody is superhuman on the pitch.”