Penryn Athletic 1 St Blazey 2
Durning Lawrence Cornwall Charity Cup
DATELINE: Kernick Road, Penryn, Saturday, December 1, 2018
MATCH SUMMARY: Ten-man St Blazey put in a superb defensive display for the final 30 minutes of this entertaining cup clash to hold off their lower division hosts and hang on for a just about deserved win. The visitors took the lead after 11 minutes but were pegged back by a Penryn header on 32 minutes. St Blazey came out all guns blazing at the start of the second half and a cracking low strike on 47 minutes gave them what ultimately proved to be the winner. Their task was made all the harder six minutes later when a rash challenge led to a red card but Blazey held at bay an onslaught from their hosts to earn a place in the last eight.
THE BLOG: No self-respecting football fan, let alone Cornwall’s foremost blogger on cup football (in my own head, anyway) should be pleased when a cup game is called off, especially when that game is a much-anticipated tie in a national competition. But I was relieved in the extreme when Saltash United’s home tie in the FA Vase Third Round against Western League Cribbs FC, from Bristol, was called off on Saturday morning.
It was a game I should have gone to see but I had already decided that I couldn’t go. At least with it being called off because of a waterlogged pitch no one will now know about my controversial choice and I can instead blame the weather.
Oh …
OK, let me explain.
I love the FA Vase. It gives virtually every club at the level at which I watch football the chance to go on a cup run which might capture national headlines, which might even end up in a big day out at Wembley, the definitive home of cup final football. It is pure football magic.
But the Saltash tie clashed with something I also love, albeit at a much lower level – the Durning Lawrence Cornwall Charity Cup. This is a 16-team invitation competition for clubs at Step Seven and below and offers most of them the best chance they will ever have of winning any cup silverware. And, as regular readers will know, it is the competition that crystallised my thoughts about the brilliance of cup football and inspired (if that’s not too big a word) this blog.
Back in 2015, the season before this series of knockout football articles began, I went to Treyew Road, the home of Truro City FC, to see Penryn Athletic and St Dennis battle it out in the final. Penryn, my hometown team, were the better side on the night – and lost.
The devastation on their faces at the final whistle, and the sheer delight etched on the faces of their St Dennis conquerors, made me finally realise something I had always felt but had never fully been able to put into words – cup football is the purest form of the game, where winning is all that matters and where there is almost always true sporting drama. It is, as Tina Turner so succinctly put it, simply the best.
And so I owe my very existence as the cupfootballblogger to the Cornwall Charity Cup and I really couldn’t miss the start of it this season. So I decided not to go Saltash’s big Vase tie and to pick a Charity Cup clash instead. So the question then arose, which one?
Now, there are many reasons for picking a game: favourite team, convenience, expectation of a top clash, even cost. This one came down to Christmas lights.
I am going to admit it – I like Christmas. Not in the middle of August, when the shops think it starts, but once December dawns it is time to start thinking festive, start the process of trying to get through the long dark nights of a British winter by the simple expedient of eating and drinking too much and then spending far too much money so that January can be even tougher and bleaker than it would be anyway!
Now, by the time this game kicked off on Saturday, December 1, I had already been to two Christmas lights switch-ons, in Truro and Falmouth. And a couple of hours after this game was due to end, the lights were to be switched on in the middle of Penryn, the town where I live. How could I miss that?
So imagine my delight when Penryn were drawn at home in the First Round of the Charity Cup. Two birds with one stone, and all that.
There was even a chance of there being a cup upset, with Athletic now plying their trade in the LWC Drinks Cornwall Combination, one step below their visitors St Blazey, who operate in the Step Seven Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Division One West. With Penryn near the top of their league, and Blazey at the shaky end of their’s, the odds of a shock were high.
So cup football, a possible cupset and festive frolics – three birds with one stone, if that’s not being too greedy.
I had already seen St Blazey knocked out of one cup already this season, going down to Dobwalls in the … wait for it, wait for it … Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup. I just never get tired of that name. So what were the chances of seeing them get knocked out of another one?
Well, by the time they took the lead on 11 minutes, thus diminishing the chances of falling victim to another “giantkilling”, I was already feeling smug that I had forgone the delights of the Vase as something remarkable had already happened.
The game was slated to kick off at 2pm – and actually did! Every other game I have been to this season has kicked off either early or late, sometimes by as much as four minutes, and I was getting a bit paranoid about it. So a game kicking off bang on time was an absolute delight. I was already on to a winner.
I wasn’t quite so successful in the photographic technology stakes though. I was definitely a loser there. While I was trying to capture the action with my smartphone camera, there were at least three other people in the sparse crowd of about 40 to 50 people (I think Christmas shopping must have begun) with proper cameras, including the always excellent Darren Luke (see A Season in Helston on Twitter) and a young woman from Falmouth University.
Even the Peninsula League’s results officer, Dave “Cornish Soccer” Deacon, was there with his compact camera. I suspect this was one of the most photographed games in Cornwall Charity Cup history – and you, dear reader, are lumbered with my efforts. Sorry about that.
I don’t know if any of them got a decent picture of Blazey’s opening goal but I know I didn’t so I will have to paint a word picture instead.
A long ball forward saw a green-and-black-shirted St Blazey forward latching on to it and then sprinting clear of the home defence. He seemed destined to score but his well-struck effort was well saved by the Penryn keeper. However, he in turn was left stranded as the ball fell to a following-up Jamie Honeywill and he tucked home the opener.
By half-time, we were all square again, a glancing header from Penryn’s centre-forward making it 1-1. Now, I am sure I have read the scorer’s name somewhere but for the life of me I can’t find it now. If someone can let me know that would be great. (Within moments of this going online I was reliably informed [thanks Tom] that the Penryn scorer was Bradley Leivers).
It had been a very even first half, if a little untidy in parts, but both sides had shown they good play decent football at times. But the real drama was to come after the break.
The only drama actually at the break was me not winning the half-time draw again. I was 13 numbers out. Unlucky for some they say. Well, this time, it was unlucky for me.
The footballing drama really began two minutes into the second half when a cracking strike from Callum McGhee made it 2-1 to St Blazey. Six minutes later, though, it looked as if the tide might be turning again when Blazey’s Matt Edwards was shown red after what the club’s Twitter feed described as “sliding in late and awkwardly on the Penryn full-back”.
I missed the exact details as I was trying to take an arty photo through the goal nets on my outgunned phone camera, but it was certainly a challenge that sparked the ire of the home players, leading to a proper melee at the scene of the crime. The Penryn keeper was particularly angry, running 30 metres to get involved and he was probably lucky not to be dismissed too.
That all set the scene for a thoroughly exciting and engrossing final 35 minutes as the 11 men of Penryn pushed harder and harder for the equaliser while the ten men of St Blazey put in a stirring defensive performance to keep them at bay. They even had to deal with the home keeper joining the Penryn attack for the final couple of minutes, trying to get on the end of long throws and corners.
In the 88th minute the home side came so close to levelling up matters but the ball slid just wide of the post. That was THE chance, the one final attempt on goal that football folklore insists every side trailing narrowly towards the end of a game will have. They almost never go in.
The fact that this one didn’t go in meant there was no way back for the home side and it was St Blazey who moved into the last eight of the Charity Cup, their determined defending being deservedly rewarded.
This might not have been the absolute thrilling goal-fest that headline writers so love to call a Christmas cracker at this time of the year but, especially in the final 20 minutes, it was definitely a fun cup tie to watch. I was so glad I was, ahem, present (well, I had to get one Christmas pun in, didn’t I)?
And the Penryn town centre Christmas lights switch-on was lovely, despite the rain. I think I made all the right choices for once. Result.
PS: Saltash finally played their Vase tie a week later and went down 4-2 to Cribbs despite being 2-1 up with ten minutes left. Oh the drama of cup football, you just have to love it.
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