Grounds for a spine-tingler

The men from Match of the Day are not the first to consider Whitby to be the perfect setting for a shocker. When Abraham Stoker sat down to pen his horrific magnum opus in 1897 he captured the eerie scene he recalled from a visit to St Mary's churchyard, next to the ruins of Whitby Abbey, high on the East Cliff above the North Yorkshire fishing town. It was there, in Bram Stoker's chiller, that Count Dracula drew his first blood on English soil: that of the unfortunate Lucy Westenra. The Match of the Day crew, no doubt, will be hoping Whitby Town get their teeth into Plymouth Argyle in similarly zealous fashion next Saturday lunchtime.

Climb the 199 steps that lead to St Mary's and it is possible to see, on the West Cliff opposite, the ground where the Seasiders will be striving to create the shock of FA Cup first-round day in front of the television cameras. Not that the Turnbull Ground (no relation) has been a happy hunting ground for Whitby Town this season. "We haven't won a League game at home yet," their manager, Harry Dunn, lamented. "We've played six, drawn one and lost five. We've played well at home in the cups, though. I just hope we can carry that into the tie and get something out of it."

It is not the only hope Dunn has for Saturday. His team – four places off the bottom of the UniBond League Premier Division after a 3-0 win at Marine yesterday – face an Argyle side not just riding high at the top of the Third Division table but also unbeaten away from Home Park this season. Dunn watched them draw at Cheltenham on Friday night.

"They've got to lose sometime," he said. "That's the principle we've got to work on. We're under no illusions. Plymouth are a very good team. But if you get a lot of luck – and we need a lot of luck – you just never know on the day. Shocks happen in every round of every cup. You just hope that they will turn up and think: 'Ah well, we don't have to do so much today'. Our lads will certainly be fired up for it. And, you never know, we might just get the rub of the green."

Whether Whitby get the rub of Paul Sturrock's in-form green and whites remains to be seen. The fickle hand of fortune was undoubtedly against them the last time they reached the first round proper of the FA Cup. On that occasion, five years ago, they held Hull City to a goalless draw in a home tie moved to Scarborough because of crowd safety concerns and were leading 4-3 with 40 seconds of the replay remaining. Then Duane Darby equalised. Hull won 8-4 in extra-time. Darby scored six of their goals. His name still sends a shiver through the Whitby dressing room.

"He'd got injured in the first tie and we'd been told he wasn't going to play," Graham Robinson reflected. "Lucky for us that he did play, eh?" Robinson also got his name on the scoresheet that night and will be looking to do likewise against Plymouth.

A native of Johannesburg, he left the southern hemisphere "to see the world" and ended up in Whitby – unlike Captain James Cook, who famously travelled in the opposite direction. A bustling centre-forward, who earns a weekday living as a coach at Middlesbrough Football Club's centre of excellence, Robinson also happens to be a veteran of Whitby Town's finest hour and a half. He played in the team that beat North Ferriby United 3-0 in the 1997 FA Vase final.

Dunn provided the managerial inspiration behind that Wembley win. Though he has endured a disappointing time of late, the County Durham man is held in high regard at the Turnbull Ground – and, indeed, beyond. "Harry's done a brilliant job," Graham Manser, the Whitby chairman, said. "We were in a shocking state when he came in 1996. The pylons had come down in a horrible north-easterly gale and we faced relegation to the second division of the Northern League. Since then we've had two promotions, we've been to Wembley, and now we're in the first round of the FA Cup against Plymouth with the whole town buzzing. Yes, Harry's done a tremendous job for us."

He's done it while holding down a day job, too. Dunn works as a maintenance assistant at Sedgefield Community Hospital – which is presumably where Tony Blair would be taken for treatment if he ever fell ill within his local consituency. He was a brilliant midfielder in his playing days – Dunn, that is – a linchpin of the fine Scarborough non-League side of the 1970s. He played in the FA Trophywinning teams of 1976 and 1977 and also tasted victory against League opposition in the FA Cup.

Indeed, Dunn scored in a 3-2 win against Preston that earned Scarborough a third-round tie at home to Crystal Palace in the 1975-76 season. "That was the Cup run of Malcolm Allison and his fedora," he recalled. "They beat us 2-1." Palace – Allison, fedora, Peter Taylor, Alan Whittle and all – went on to reach the semi-finals, losing 2-0 to Lawrie McMenemy's Southampton at Stamford Bridge. Dunn went on to reach the third round with Scarborough two years later, losing 3-0 at Brighton after beating Rochdale 4-2 and Crewe 2-0.

Whitby's manager has aged a little since those days. "By the time this game's over I'll be about 58," he said. "I'm only 48, but I'm ageing rapidly the way things are going. We've had so many injuries this season and last Saturday we had both our central midfield players, Richard Dunning and Craig Veart, carried off. We're sweating on them being fit for next week because we'll need our best players against Plymouth. It's a nice bit of publicity for the club and the lads to be featured on Match of the Day. And hopefully, hopefully... well, I'm hoping against hope that we don't get whopped. Put it that way."

There is hope too that Whitby might claim their first League scalp on home ground; they beat Halifax in the first round in 1983, but at The Shay. "Plymouth are going to love coming to our pitch to play some decent football," Graham Robinson said, tongue heavily in cheek. "It's got a lot of bobbles and if the rain and snow comes down it could be a bit of a banana skin for them." The Third Division leaders certainly wouldn't be the first recorded victims of a shock in Whitby – as followers of Lucy Westenra's novel fate will confirm.