Falmouth Town v Torpoint Athletic
IT SHOULD BE A PRETTY SIMPLE QUESTION TO ANSWER REALLY. What is the nearest football ground to your home? Well, after living in Penryn for almost three years, I have discovered that the answer to that isn’t what I thought it was.
And I was glad about that because it added a bit of drama to my journey to the football on Saturday.
I have got into a routine over the past few months of scrabbling around on social media and the internet on a Friday night/Saturday morning trying to find out which, if any, of the cup games in Cornwall have survived the appalling rainy weather and then shooting off to all parts of The Duchy to get my cup football fix.
Yet, on Saturday, there was no such over-excitement about the weather (cold but dry) and no real worry about where I would go. There was only one real choice and it was just up the road – literally.
Bickland Park is the rambling old home of Falmouth Town; think of a broken down, fading country mansion which is the ancestral home of an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times and you get the picture, It is a venue I have visited many a time, so there would be no anxiety about finding my way, getting to the game on time, running out of petrol etc. No, it would all be nice and simple.
So the venue wasn’t a very adventurous choice, and neither was the competition. It was, after all, a quarter-final tie in that most eloquently and excessively titled of all cups, the wonderful, the one, the only, Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup. It is my favourite but, again, it’s not the most adventurous option.
Therefore, in order to add a little frisson of anticipation to Saturday’s meanderings, I decided to walk to the game. That way, I could see if it was as close to home as Penryn’s Kernick Park ground, which is about a 20-minute uphill walk away from my house, and also leave my car in its hard-won parking space in my street. They are like gold dust around here!
As the walk to Bickland is also all uphill from here (about 230 feet up, according to Google), I decided to give myself plenty of time and left at 1.15pm for the 2.30pm kick-off. I was outside the ground at 1.35pm! Yep, the closest ground to my home in Penryn is not Penryn, it’s Falmouth, a distance of 0.8 miles against a mile. How dramatic a discovery is that? (Yes, I know, I do definitely need to get out more).
The downside of this discovery was that I had time to kill, the upside was that I used it to make another discovery – the delights of Tregoniggie Woods, a small stretch of urban woodland squeezed between the football club and houses on one side and an industrial estate on the other. It was lovely.
My Saturday had been incredibly exciting so far (see previous parentheses about getting out more) but could the football match itself live up to the drama of the day so far?
Well, I was expecting a close encounter. These two sides both play in the SWPL Premier and, although Falmouth Town are flying high in fourth place and Torpoint Athletic are languishing down in 15th place out of 20 teams, the visitors are having a superb season in cup competitions.
A couple of weeks ago in the Cornwall Senior Cup, they pulled off probably the biggest shock in Cornish cup football this season by coming from 2-0 down to beat holders and perennial winners Bodmin Town 3-2. Even the club’s third team are having a knockout season in knockout football and are through to the last four of the Cornwall Junior Cup.
No, there is no doubting Torpoint’s cup credentials this season and I fully expected a cup cracker.
It took a while to get going though.
For the first 25 to 30 minutes, the game struggled to spark into life. It was almost as if the enforced winter break because of the Cornish rain had left both teams trying to find their rhythm, almost as if it was pre-season all over again. Torpoint were the brighter of the two teams while the word that sprang to mind for the Falmouth performance was lackadaisical. Now, that’s a nice word and I wrote it down in my notebook as soon as I thought of it.
There was no lack of effort from the home team but if felt as if they were struggling to link their brains with their feet and they weren’t really getting anywhere. It was summed up nicely by the irate yelling of a Fal midfielder as they defended a set-piece. “Mark up, mark up,” he shouted angrily while pointing at several of his team-mates. Torpoint promptly played the ball to the player who he had failed to “mark up”.
Now, another good word is “fractious” and it was when this tie turned from lackadaisical to fractious that the excitement really began. Falmouth’s number 9, Marcello Jones, had already been booked for a challenge on the visiting keeper when, just a couple of minutes later and right in front of the grandstand and dugouts, he went in for another forceful tackle.
Torpoint took loud exception to his efforts, Falmouth took exception to their exception and just about all 22 players, plus people from on the benches, came together on the halfway line for a full and frank exchange of views.
Once things had calmed down a bit, the ref consulted with his linesman and then set things off again by issuing a second yellow, and therefore a red, to Mr Jones and sending Torpoint boss Dean Cardew to the stands. Everyone in the ground seemed to feel the need to express an opinion on that one.
Now, far be it from me to condone a bit of “handbags” but it certainly sparked the tie into life. The ten men of Falmouth were spurred on by a furious sense of injustice while the eleven men in blue of Torpoint sensed that they now really had a very decent chance of making it through to another semi-final.
That all happened on the half-hour mark and from then until the 90 minutes were up the intensity, pace and competitiveness of this game never wavered. It did indeed turn into a cracker. I absolutely loved it.
The atmosphere was cranked up even further in first-half injury time when the wounded Falmouth Ten used their ire to up their game, put together their best move of the match so far, and take the lead against general expectations, Jordan Annear getting the decisive touch to give them the half-time lead.
They also owed that lead to an outstanding first 45 minutes from their two central defenders who turned in a commanding performance, dominating in the air, especially from set-pieces. Maybe it was because I was standing behind the goal they were defending, or maybe because centre-half was the position I used to play, but I really enjoyed watching them. No need to go around giving these namby-pamby forwards all the credit, is there?
The half-time interval didn’t have the calming effect it normally has and the first ten minutes of the second half were completely manic. Firstly, Luke Brabyn’s lovely strike from the edge of the box made it 2-0 to the ten men, then Curtis Damerell (who I am reliably informed had scored for Torpoint’s Thirds in the Junior Cup the previous week) pulled one back for the eleven men, and then Falmouth keeper Ryan Barnes pulled off a top save to prevent a Torpoint leveller.
That more or less set the pattern for the rest of the match, with the visitors charging forward in search of an equaliser and the home side playing on the break and just failing to make the most of a couple of one-on-one opportunities, one of which had the Bickland faithful howling for a red card against the Torpoint keeper. He didn’t get one, which led to more howling.
And an offside decision against Falmouth as they tried to break once more led to one plaintive voice being heard in the crowd above all others, voicing the thoughts of all anxious football supporters everywhere: “Oh, give over linesman!” It was a reassuring, comforting cry, like the first cuckoo of spring or the “aahh” of the first cup of tea in the morning, and made all seem right with the world. I felt right at home.
Fifteen minutes after the final whistle – a sound which the Fal faithful greeted with the biggest, happiest roar of the afternoon – I actually was back home.
Who says you have to travel miles to have a real footballing adventure? This fun, frantic and frenetic cup tie adventure was right on my doorstep. There is, as they say, no place like home.
THE STATISTICS BIT AND MORE PICTURES
Falmouth Town 2 Torpoint Athletic 1
(Half-time 1-0)
Played at Bickland Park, Falmouth, on Saturday, February 24, 2018
Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup Quarter-Finals
Cup matches watched this season: 23
Home wins: 14
Away wins: 6
Draws: 3
Number of competitions watched: 12
Home goals: 57
Away goals: 36
Total goals: 93
PICTURES EXTRA
Some more photographs from the Walter C Parson Cup clash between Falmouth Town (in amber and black) and Torpoint Athletic.
Match action from Falmouth Town v Torpoint Athletic in the CSWPLWCPFD League Cup. As abbreviations go I have seen briefer.
CONTACT
If you have any thoughts or comments about this blog, email me at thecupfootballblogger@hotmail.com; find me on Twitter via @cupfootballblog; or find me on Facebook at Peter Harlow (the cup football blogger)
thecupfootballblogger 