FORGET the FA Cup Final. The play-offs are now the climax to the soccer season.

The Cup Final is still up there among the highlights of the season but a lot of its magic has gone.

It doesn't help the FA Cup's credibility when the country's best team pulls out or when you turn on BBC on cup final afternoon and see an old film being shown in its place.

And just as the Cup Final's attraction is waning, the play-offs are becoming compulsive viewing. If only they were on terrestrial TV.

Where the Cup Final is almost always a dull spectacle, the play-offs practically guarantee classics.

Where the play-offs beat the Cup Final hands down is in the sheer tension of the occasion.

In the old days the FA Cup Final used to mean more to the players who took part than it does today.

To win the FA Cup was the pinnacle of a player's career. The importance of winning was earth-shattering in the days when it was not money but glory that drove the game and when all 22 players taking part had grown up watching the Cup Final and seeing what it meant.

These days the Cup Final doesn't matter that much to the mega-rich foreign imports to whom it is just a routine stop on their global merry-go-round of big games.

It doesn't mean as much to them and it doesn't mean as much to us.

The play-off finals, on the other hand, are life and death occasions to the players and fans taking part.

Where nerves seem to get the better of Cup Final teams, the play-off finalist seem to throw caution to the wind and go hell for leather. This season provided further evidence of that with the Villa-Chelsea Cup Final throwing up the perfect cure for insomnia while Gilliingham v Wigan and Ipswich v Barnsley were absolute classics.

An entire season coming down to one game might not be fair but it makes for a unbelievable spectacle. RMI's entrance fee hike a turn-off LEIGH RMI have enough problems attracting fans without having to charge them a whopping £7.

RMI deserve every award in the book for winning the Unibond Premier and gain promotion to the Nationwide Conference with crowds of 150-200.

Being just one rung down from the Football League should provide the perfect foundation for them to build on their big fan base.

But when the Conference sets a minimum £7 admission fee to which RMI must comply the club is going to find it hard attract new supporters. Well-behaved Whites fans a credit to football HOW heartening it is to see the behaviour of Wanderers fans praised to high heaven at a time when football hooliganism is increasingly back in the headlines.

The recent trouble between English and Turkish club supporters and planned clashes between national teams' fans at Euro 2000 leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

But it only made the tribute to the way Wanderers supporters have been conducting themselves in the last few years all the sweeter.

Arrests at the Reebok are down to a minimum and encroachments on to the pitch are non-existent. Other clubs enjoy coming to the Reebok and welcome Wanderers to their grounds. No fan trouble means no fines or unnecessary headaches for the club.

No-one should have to thank fans for behaving themselves but Wanderers are so proud of their crowd that they took the unprecedented step of telling them so this week.

We would be kidding ourselves if we said Wanderers haven't had their share of hooligan problems in the past.

But at present the Reebok crowd has become the respectable face of English football and long may it contin FA's stupidity is Gillingham's gain I DOUBT if Peter Taylor shed much of a tear when his old England Under-21 charges lost 2-0 to Italy on Saturday.

The under-21s losing? It never happened during Taylor's years in charge. And he showed what a super manager he is when he led Gillingham into the First Division for the first time in their history 24 hours after the Under-21 defeat.

Of course, Taylor paid for his perfect record by getting the sack and being replaced by Howard Wilkinson.

It seemed Wilkinson had to be found a job within the England set-up and no amount of success by Taylor was going to save him.

If Taylor wasn't respected enough already, the dignified way he conducted himself after becoming the sacrificial lamb sent his popularity through the roof.

There's not a man alive outside the FA who believes sacking Taylor to make room for Wilkinson was anything but a disgraceful decision.

Last weekend proved that England's loss is Gillingham's gain and that the FA needed their heads testing for showing a winner the door. Old boys will send snooker fans loopy THE old boys are breathing new life into snooker.

The World Snooker Seniors Tour is off and running and looking better entertainment than that served up by their younger counterparts.

Television's huge appetite for snooker apparently has a place for this new snooker offshoot and who can blame it.

Its inaugural event featured the likes of Ray Reardon, now 67, Cliff Thorburn, 52, Eddie Charlton, 70, Rex Williams, 66 and Willie Thorne, 46, who won it.

With Dennis Taylor, Terry Griffiths, Jimmy White and Steve Davies, not to mention Alex Higgins, all having enough years under their belts to qualify, there are enough massive names in there to make the sport interesting again.

The quality of snooker might not have been any better in the old days but at least there were some real characters, unlike today.