TAMWORTH, England — It’s been an eventful few days for Tamworth goalkeeper Jasbir Singh. On Saturday morning he was on a maternity ward, before 24 hours later attempting to help his National League team cause one of the all-time FA Cup shocks against Tottenham Hotspur. (stream a replay on ESPN+, U.S. only)

And they so nearly pulled it off. Centre-back Jordan Cullinane-Liburd, up for a last-ditch corner in the seventh minute of added time, had the chance to write his name in FA Cup folklore, only for Spurs goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky to deny him.

“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind,” Singh told ESPN. “My baby boy was born yesterday morning, and then I came today to play some football against Tottenham Hotspur. It’s been … interesting.”

Singh was outstanding, as were his teammates — all part-time footballers — but eventually it needed the introduction of Dejan Kulusevski and Son Heung-Min to get Tottenham past their non-league hosts.

For 90 minutes, Tamworth had kept Tottenham at bay. By the start of extra time, Singh had taken on Tamworth’s captaincy. He walked up to the halfway line for the coin toss and saw that Spurs had a new skipper, too. “It was funny, they took off James Maddison, then you have Son,” he said. “I was standing there with the armband and just thought, ‘Oh my God.'”

Tamworth, in the fifth tier of English football, covered every artificial blade of grass, tracked Premier League giants all over the slanted field, giving scant respect for their illustrious visitors. In the end, Spurs needed a dab of luck and a bit of class from Kulusevski to burst Tamworth’s bubble and win 3-0. The scoreline looks emphatic, it was anything but.

Tamworth is a place most well-known for its Snowdome, the Spud Man (Ben Newman), its Norman castle, and pigs, but on Sunday it was about football, and their band of part-time players.

The club had received criticism from their own fans for hiking up ticket prices. Entry is usually £20 for adults and free for children under 10, while a standard seat for this game was £42, with a terrace spot costing £39; for children under 10, tickets were £29 and £25 respectively. It was still a 3,750 sellout (a slightly reduced capacity due to media and dignitaries from the visitors).

The weekend had seen any hopes of giant-killings squashed by the bigger beasts. But Tamworth still entered the tie hoping to become only the third non-league team, after Luton Town and Lincoln City, to knock over Premier League opponents in the world’s oldest club competition.

They’d already worked miracles, securing back-to-back promotions under Andy Peaks, the manager who has gone full-time this week. But this fixture was widely regarded to be the biggest in Tamworth’s history. There have been playoff wins, but nothing like Ange Postecoglou’s team coming to town. And there were moments here on a freezing Sunday where it looked like they might create the greatest story yet.

Parents held their children on their shoulders looking for a glimpse of the Tottenham players as they walked off their team bus. The players squeezed past a catering van, a couple of temporary tents into their port-a-cabin changing rooms with (according to Tamworth’s players) three or so working showers. Spurs supporters, meanwhile, all 750 of them, battled train strikes and frozen landscapes to make the fixture; Tamworth fans were there on Saturday with spades scraping snow and ice off the concourses.

Supporters behind Postecoglou’s bench, in a spot called “The Shed” — a claustrophobic, all-standing part of the 4,000-capacity ground — mixed bating the Australian manager with doing all they could to will their team on to an incredible result. Spurs received the full song sheet: “how s— must you be, we’re only part-time?” and “they’ve got work in the morning”, reminding Tottenham that they were playing a team who two years ago were in the seventh tier and one of only three part-time teams in the National League.

Winger Beck-Ray Enoru, who works as a shop assistant in a clothes shop in the ladies’ department, had to come to the rescue when kick off was delayed, perching on shoulders to strap a broken net to the crossbar. “Hayden [Hollis] shouted at me, so I went to help out and got it done,” Enoru told ESPN.

Enoru’s nerves were already jingling; but the were settled and a couple of minutes later he turned Pedro Porro inside-out to nearly open the scoring, but for Kinsky saving well at his near-post. “The nerves were high, but I just wanted to have a run at my man and get past him,” Enoru said. “I wanted to leave nothing out there, just give it my all and just kept on trying to do that, over and over again.”

The Spurs team that started the game cost £250m to assemble, plus loanee Timo Werner and academy product Mikey Moore, but they needed extra time and the introduction of Son and Kulusevski to get the job done.

“I said before the game, if a few of the lads don’t fancy it, we had a chance,” Singh added.

Maddison was Spurs’ main outlet, but couldn’t find his way past Singh. Werner rallied hard, but failed to score in his one-on-one as the goalkeeper produced a super stop. Spurs, meanwhile, struggled to fend off the long-range throw-ins from Tom “Bapman” Tonks, who will be back to the day job with his sandwich delivery service.

The resistance was only broken by a huge slice of luck, too, as the unfortunate Nathan Tshikuna deflected the ball into his own net. Kulusevski and Brennan Johnson then added underserved gloss to the scoreline.

For Tamworth, this fixture will bring them a £250,000 windfall. It’s already been enough to get their manager Peaks a full-time job, leaving his role as a support worker at Tresham College in Kettering. The rest will go on improving their infrastructure, including their changing rooms and a new electronic scoreboard. It could’ve been roughly quadruple that had the replays not been scrapped in FA Cup as of this season.

“We’re frustrated now, but once we watch the game back later, the lads will be proud,” Singh said.

After the euphoria will come reality. Singh is back to work on Monday as a building surveyor. His first job is at 9 a.m., and he still has to pick a name for his baby boy with his partner. “He won’t be called Brennan Johnson or anything!” he joked.

As the players from both sides mingled around the side of the pitch, with the Tamworth fans singing “We want our replay,” Postecoglou answered questions. A staff member from Tamworth walked out from the Spurs changing room clutching a bundle of shirts, ready to hand out to their players, and Enoru got Porro’s. He’s not so sure that he’ll make it to work on Monday morning.

But the adrenaline will soon subside. Tamworth are 16th in the National League and need to avoid getting drawn into a relegation battle. But first for them, it’s another cup match back at their Lamb Ground on Tuesday evening, when they face Boldmere St. Michaels in the Birmingham Senior Cup. “I hope the gaffer will give me the evening off,” Singh said. “Paternity leave.”