Perranporth Reserves 2 St Agnes Reserves 2
St Agnes Reserves won 4-3 on penalties
(Although it might have been 3-2, I sort of lost count while trying to get a picture).
Trelawny League, Division One League Cup
Monday, September 5, 2016
Cup magic moment: In 41 cup matches last season, I did not see one penalty shoot-out. In only my second game of this campaign I was finally treated to the painful entertainment of sport’s toughest tie-break. And the St Agnes keeper’s superb save from the very first spot-kick was the real highlight of the night.
SOMETIMES, the search for a cup game, especially this early in the season, gets a bit – well, let’s just say that it can take you down some of football’s less well-trodden highways and byways.
Yes, there have already been games in the FA Cup (Cornwall has only one team left in that competition, Truro City, who haven’t played in it yet this season but who have been drawn away to Winchester in the next round) as well as the League Cup, sorry EFL Cup, and the much-derided EFL Trophy, sorry Checkatrade Trophy.
But there hasn’t been a great deal of cup action in the Duchy yet. And that’s why I found myself in Perranporth on a Monday night after work.
Now, let me say straightaway, that I have nothing against visiting Perranporth and their tidy little Ponsmere Valley ground. I have been there a couple of times before and have always liked it.
Once, I was the entire Okehampton Argyle away support there. That was a couple of seasons back when the Dartmoor club was forced to play a season in the Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Division One West as there was a preponderance of Devon sides across the competition.
When I first moved to the South West, about ten years ago, I lived in Okehampton and they became my team. I have never seen them win away (I haven’t seen them win much at home, either) and that sad record didn’t change on that day. Oke lost.
Since then, both the teams on display in that match have dropped down a division, Oke to the Devon & Exeter League for this campaign and Perranporth a couple of seasons back to the Cornwall Combination. So my Monday night excursion to the Cornish north coast must be for a game in the Combination League Cup then, I hear you cry.
Er, no.
I stepped down even further to see Perran’s reserves take on the second string from their near-neighbours St Agnes in the Trelawny League’s Division One League Cup First Round.
The Combination is Step 8 on the non-league ladder with the Trelawny Premier at Step 9, the highest level of so-called “junior” football. I suppose that makes Trelawny Division One Step 10. If a team playing at this level this season was to win 13 consecutive promotions, they could be playing Manchester United in the Premier League in about 2030!
So I wasn’t expecting the highest quality of football but what I got was proper cup drama. I have only been to two cup games so far this campaign and they have both been real crackers.
And the referee has managed to get heavily involved both times as well. In the FA Cup game at Bodmin which kicked off my season, three players were red-carded. There were no sendings-off this time but there were at least five yellow cards, all of them, I believe, for dissent, and the first three of them all to Perranporth players and all in the same incident. I can safely say I have never seen anything quite like that before.
But perhaps something like that just might have been expected. Just before kick-off, I overheard one of the Aggies’ players being told: “Keep your mouth shut, this ref is card-happy.” They proved to be wise words, and ones which the visitors heeded until two of them managed to talk themselves into the book in the final ten minutes. Will players never learn?
So to the game itself. The first contender for my cup magic moment came midway through the first half. The Perran keeper made a really good save from a header but, about a minute later, he was beaten by a deflected effort which gave Aggies the lead. That meant that my run of not seeing a goalless draw in a cup match would extend to at least 43 games. That’s definitely a bit magical.
Four minutes into the second half and the visitors were 2-0 up and it looked like the contest might be over. I should have known better, though. This is cup football, after all, and the only thing predictable about that is that it is unpredictable. Just before the hour mark, Perranporth pulled a goal back. Before that, St Agnes had hit the bar twice and, just after the home side’s opener, the visitors were convinced that they had scored a third but the ref ruled that the ball didn’t go over the line.
Neat and tidy Ponsmere Valley might be, but there’s no goal-line technology here!
With five minutes to go, that decision came back to haunt the visitors as the home side levelled. Even then, St Agnes had time to hit the bar again before the final whistle went. Had they blown their chance? Were the cup football gods frowning on the Saints? Well, the gods would have had to have had pretty good eyesight as the light was rapidly fading – there was a lovely sunset over the town – and there were no floodlights to alleviate the rapidly descending gloom.
So, with the scores level after 90 minutes, there was no time for extra-time and, to my delight, we went straight to penalties. I had been waiting for a shootout for over a year. It felt like it was a box that needed ticking and now I could. That was certainly a magic moment.
Sad but true.
In an over-excited blogging mood, I moved to the end of the ground where the spot-kicks were being taken and spent my time trying to get a decent picture of the drama on my phone. In among concentrating on that, I lost count of the score. When I got home, I was convinced St Agnes had triumphed 4-3 but the league’s official website said it was 3-2. I still think I am right but it’s not often you come home from a game and are not entirely certain of the score.
It turned out to be a cup footballing night where a lot of unusual things occurred – the triple booking, the penalties, the lack of light. It just goes to show that you never know what might happen at any given game you go to, and that’s why I love it. That’s why we all love it.
I might have wandered off football’s beaten track a little bit on Monday night, but it’s a game I will remember for lots of reasons. I just need to nail down the actual score now…
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