Falmouth Town 0 Saltash United 1
Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup Final
DATELINE: Blaise Park, St Blazey, Saturday, May 11, 2019
MATCH SUMMARY: This was the second cup final between these two Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Premier Division sides in a matter of weeks and it ended with a measure of revenge for Saltash United, who had lost 2-1 to Falmouth Town in a controversial RGB Building Supplies Cornwall Senior Cup Final on Easter Monday. That match probably turned on a red card for an Ashes player early in the second half and was settled by a Falmouth headed goal with ten minutes to go. This time, it was Saltash who scored the decisive goal with a header from a set-piece, David Barker proving the hero on the day with his late, late winner.
THE BLOG: As a gentleman of a certain vintage, now well in to my sixth decade on this planet, the phrase “cup final” conjures up a wealth of thoughts and images in the footballing part of my brain.
Back in the day, THE cup final, the FA Cup Final, was just about the only live game on the telly all season. That might be hard to believe for those of you brought up on a diet of wall-to-wall small screen football but such was the way of the world back then.
And so the excitement around the cup final for a young football fan was palpable with a pre-match TV build-up from 9am all the way until the kick-off at 3pm. Ah, do you remember the good old days of 3pm kick-offs?
Wembley Stadium was always a riot of colour, with flags and banners and marching bands. All the dignitaries were dressed in their finest as they were introduced to the nervous players and the strains of Abide With Me echoed around the glorious old stadium.
And always, always, the occasion was bathed in a golden glow of sensational spring sunshine, adding to the colour and the sharpness of the picture and the feeling that this was something very different to your run-of-the-mill muddy and wet mid-winter encounters. It was the cup final and it was special.
Well, we might not have had the Twin Towers or, now, the Big Shiny Arch, at St Blazey on Saturday but Blaise Park looked an absolute sun-drenched picture for the final of the cup contest with the best name of them all – the Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup.
We didn’t have the Band of the Coldstream Guards marching up and down the hallowed turf but we did have Falmouth’s noisy band of supporters, F-Troop, marching to the gates in full voice a few minutes before kick-off.
And we did have flags and banners, which is always a novel sight at matches at this level of the game, plus a few red flares from the outnumbered Saltash contingent and a host of what looked and sounded like mini-vuvuzelas for the youngsters, which greatly added to the infectiously delightful din.
We also had a crowd of just under 600 people – 585 paying punters to be precise – which is a pretty good effort for two Step Six sides. As we crowded on to the grass banks around the ground, most in T-shirts, some in shorts, there was a proper cup final buzz, that festival feeling of a big sporting occasion.
To top it all off, we were bathed in the wonderful May sunshine, exactly as we should be on a day like this. Yes, it felt like a proper cup final.
The appointed kick-off time was 2pm and I rocked up at about 1.25pm, easily the earliest I had been to a match all season (with the possible exception of an East Cornwall League Division One Cup tie at Roche when I got the kick-off time wrong and had time for a proper wander around before the action began). This was to be my last cup game of the blogging season, my third cup final in a week, and I didn’t want to miss anything.
Sadly though, I did miss something. A pasty.
Rumour has it that the Saltash coach turned up at Blaise Park at midday, a full two hours before kick-off and, by 12.30pm, all the pasties had gone. Here in Cornwall, a paucity of pasties constitutes a proper crisis. No big occasion, or small one for that matter, is complete in the Duchy without a pasty. It’s part of the culture.
Just before I sat down to write this, I walked up to the little shop in town and there, on the door of one of the neighbouring businesses, was possibly the most Cornish sign I have ever seen: “Back in 5 mins. Just popped up the shop for a pasty.” This hiatus in the commercial process might have caused consternation in other parts of the world but here people would have said to themselves: “Fair enough,” and then wondered about wandering off to get a pasty themselves while they were waiting.
But to be fair to cup final hosts St Blazey, that was about the only thing missing from the day. I had a chat with groundsman Paul before the game and he was rightly proud of how the ground looked, especially the pitch, which glowed an immaculate green.
The club have hosted a number of cup finals and semi-finals over the past few weeks, including Wednesday night’s Charity Cup final between St Dennis and Illogan RBL (see blog below, The Final Countdown – Part Two) but there were no signs of wear and tear. Blaise Park has long been one of my favourite football grounds in Cornwall, it looks and feels like a “proper” football ground, and I only grew to love it more on Saturday.
But which club, which set of supporters, would love it the most come the final whistle, that was the big question? Saltash already had great memories of St Blazey, having beaten Mousehole here in the final of last season’s Cornwall Senior Cup, while Falmouth Town had already beaten the Ashes in one final this season, taking the Senior Cup title from them, but were now defending the CSWPLWCPFD League Cup title that they claimed last year.
Easter Monday’s Senior Cup Final had been thoroughly entertaining, with three goals, one red card, loads of chances at either end and, ultimately, a late Fal winner. Would Saturday’s final live up to that?
The truth is that, although it was always absorbing, it was not a thriller. You kept feeling that you were right on the edge of something truly dramatic happening but it never quite got there. It was an altogether a more cagey affair than the Senior Cup Final.
Falmouth, loudly urged on by the big majority in the crowd who had come along to make a proper day out of it, certainly started the brighter and, for much of the first half, kept the Ashes pinned right back. They struggled to create many clear-cut openings though, with probably the best chance coming late in the half when a shot from the right-hand side of the box whistled just wide of the far post.
In fact, one of the highlights of the opening 45 minutes was an overheard exchange between opposing players. After another appeal for a foul had fallen on excellent referee Stuart Ash’s deaf ears, one player launched into yet another complaint about the man in black’s performance.
“Oh shut up moaning,” came the reply from a member of the opposition.
“Shut up telling him to shut up,” intervened an anguished third party.
Oh the level of footballing debate. It does make me smile.
So, 0-0 at half-time but no need for me to worry. I always see goals in the cup games I blog about across Cornwall and beyond. The capricious gods of footballing fate wouldn’t let me down on the last day of the season, would they? Would they?
Well, for a long time, a very long time, it looked as if they would.
Falmouth started the second half seemingly determined to make their possession superiority count and kept pushing forward, but the goal wouldn’t come as chances were missed and the Ashes defended stoutly and intelligently.
Hmm, still goalless going into the final quarter. What was going on here?
Then, almost imperceptibly, the tide began to turn. Saltash made a couple of substitutions which gave them more of an attacking threat and they began to have a few more goal chances of their own. Falmouth were still a threat going forward but there was a growing feeling around Blaise Park – well, OK, I had a growing feeling – that if anyone was going to nick it, then it would be Saltash.
But I think most people were beginning to settle for extra time and, perhaps, penalties, to decide the destination of the cup, when up stepped David Barker with a storming header into the top corner as the match counted down towards injury time. 1-0 to Saltash. Would it be enough?
In the few minutes left Falmouth valiantly tried to grab that elusive equaliser but, in truth, it never looked likely to come and, at the final whistle, it was the Saltash players and fans jumping for joy and the Falmouth followers who were left to rue what might have been.
And that was that for my cup journey this season, my fourth year of blogging about the joys of the beautiful game in its knockout form.
As I lingered by the gate watching the celebrations and listening to the hum of cup final conversation, I thought back to games I had watched earlier in the season, mainly to the beginning of my journey through the Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup for 2018-19.
It all began in an absolute downpour at the wonderfully named Lantoom Park as Dobwalls edged out St Blazey in a First Round tie and then ended in glorious spring sunshine at St Blazey itself on Saturday. The end of any long journey is a poignant moment of memories and reflection and I didn’t really want to leave Blaise Park, I didn’t want the season to be over.
But, for me, it was and I consoled myself with the thought that, in August, it will all be starting all over again. Who knows, the sun might even still be shining then.
NB: For more pictures, see my Facebook page. Search for Peter Harlow @cupfootballblogger
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