On the face of it, this was just what the FA Cup needed.
Following swiftly on from Rochdale's shock draw at home to Premier League Spurs, Will Grigg's winner for Wigan against cup favourites Manchester City on Monday night arguably came at just the right time for footballing purists up and down the country. Upsets such as these, after all, massively enrich the famous old competition- yet have become increasingly rare as the gap between rich and poor has grown in the modern era.
And so, for many, the temptation has been to view the FA Cup as something of a dying patient in dire need of CPR. The oft-spoken of 'romance of the cup' routinely taking a back seat to wide-scale rotation and top six monopolisation of the latter stages.
Wigan and Rochdale's success at the hands of behemoths Manchester City and Tottenham may serve as a timely push-back in the fight to avoid the country's most cherished cup competition going completely stale- but how long this resurgence can be sustained, though, is up for debate.
The fact remains that for too many clubs, the FA Cup is a distant second behind league form on a list of priorities. Whether it be Premier League leaders Manchester City, relegation strugglers West Brom or promotion hopefuls Derby County, the focus is on hitting targets in the league above all else.
Such are the financial incentives for staying in the Premier League, or indeed being promoted to the top-flight, that the sad reality is that most clubs know they must eschew glory in favour of both safety and financial security. Add in involvement in the Champions League for the country's top sides, and it's not hard to see why interest has started to dwindle in the competition. Common logic decrees that if, for whatever reason, managers and clubs cannot bring themselves to fully invest in the FA Cup then why should supporters?
So what could be done to improve the competition's fortunes?
First, as the FA Cup continues to slip down the list of priorities for Football League clubs, the obvious point to make is that a bigger carrot needs to be dangled in front of all those with realistic aspirations of winning the competition. Affording a Champions League berth to the side that lifts the cup would no doubt bring a renewed focus from managers who have, up to now, seen league form as the one priority in their season- and strengthen competition from the Premier League's middle class of Everton, Leicester and Burnley who have to varying extents turned their focus elsewhere in recent seasons.
The other major criticism of the FA Cup is primarily logistical. In an already packed footballing schedule that crams a minimum of 40 games into a season, the existence of replays as a means of deciding ties ending in draws after the first game only adds to the strain on fatigued squads during a difficult part of the campaign. Coming just after a busy festive period that affords little time to rest and recuperate, the early rounds of the cup are diminished in quality by replays that, in most cases, managers don't seem to want at all.
"Maybe in the future if the managers and referee agree after the first game we can go to penalties," said Swansea manager Carlos Carvalhal recently. "I believe if you had asked us and the Sheffield Wednesday manager we would have gone to penalties. It’s a bit like the Police Academy films. First there is one and then there is too many." Carvalhal's perspective is far from unique within the game, with the temptation for managers such as the Portuguese there to field a significantly weaker team in replays. All of which diminishes the FA Cup.
There will be no easy fixes; the financial might of the Premier League is too great for that to be the case. And while Grigg and Rochdale equaliser Steve Davies reminded viewers of how good the FA Cup can be, urgent steps still need to be taken to resuscitate a competition for which moments of this ilk remain the exception rather than the rule. As Wigan and Rochdale proved, all is not totally lost. Yet.
