Kernow Stone St Piran League Cup semi-final
Illogan RBL V Penryn Athletic
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Played at the neutral venue of Underlane, Wendron
THE SHORT MATCH REPORT: Penryn sealed their place in the league cup final thanks to a simply sensational volley by Morgan Vallejo three minutes from time which finally saw off Illogan’s brave challenge.
As football fans, we are a bit prone to hyperbole at times, but I cannot imagine a better strike on any football pitch anywhere in England last weekend than Vallejo’s 87th-minute stunner. As the ball dropped from the sky, he hit a volley across his body from a good 30 yards out and it sizzled into the top corner. Everyone in the crowd, whoever they were supporting, made an “ooh” noise as the ball hit the back of the net and the entire Penryn contingent, including the keeper who ran 80 metres to join in, just piled on top of the scorer in jubilation. Scenes, as they say.
It needed something special to see off a determined RBL, who had taken the lead after just seven minutes with a header from a high cross to the far post. The scorer was Simon Ellis and it was no more than they deserved after a bright start. However, by the 18th minute, Penryn were 2-1 ahead, thanks to a 15th-minute penalty by Ryan Reeve after a trip in the box, and then Vallejo wriggled free inside the penalty area and squeezed home his first of the match.
Neither side could add to the score before the break and the second half settled into a pattern of Illogan dominating possession and looking threatening from set-pieces, especially corners, while Penryn played some neat football on the break and came close a couple of times. But neither side could find the net again until Vallejo came up with his absolute worldie three minutes from time. What a way to win a cup semi-final. Wow.
FINAL SCORE: Illogan RBL 1 Penryn Athletic 3
PICTURES: Search for Peter Harlow on Facebook and there you will find a selection of snapshots taken on my phone.
A BLOGGER’S THOUGHTS: On Saturday, I paid to get into a football match. It was a wonderful feeling. What a strange world we live in at the moment.
Saturday’s match was always going to be special. It was a cup semi-final at a neutral venue, which adds a certain amount of tension and excitement to any footballing occasion. It is always something special. And you always know there is something out of the ordinary about a game at this level, which is Step 7 of the Non League Pyramid, when the man on the gate directs you away from the normal parking spaces and into a grass field. That’s definitely the sign of a big game!
OK, so Wendron Cricket Club was also in action at the sporting complex which is Underlane and so they took up some of the regular parking spots but there is always the feel of a carnival atmosphere, of something different to the run of the mill, when you have to park in a field.
Or maybe I just haven’t got out enough recently …
The excitement was added to by the fact that the same man at the gate who directed me to the parking also took £3 from me for the privilege of coming in to watch the game. I couldn’t help but smile at him and say: “This is better, innit?” and got a similar beaming smile in return. We were all feeling good about being here.
That sense of joy was added to by the unexpected sunshine (the forecast earlier in the week had been horrendous) and a definite sense of freedom. I was so looking forward to the game that I got there earlier than usual which meant I also had time for a quick pre-match pint that, incidentally, cost me than the entrance fee, and had time to watch some of the cricket action. It all felt quite miraculously normal. Bloody marvellous.
Even putting aside all that pandemic pandemonium, this was a football occasion to be excited about. The Kernow Stone St Piran League has had a difficult birth, having failed to complete a single season since the competition’s 2019 inception because of virus restrictions, but it has managed to rescue competitive football this campaign by staging the league cup. It started out with four groups, giving teams four or five proper games at least, followed by quarter-finals, this weekend’s semis, and a final to come. In the short history of this league, this felt like its most important weekend so far.
Penryn, though, my hometown team, were celebrating even before kick-off. The details of the FA’s latest reorganisation of the pyramid were announced this week and saw dozens of teams across the country “upwardly moved” – a delighted Penryn were one of those to benefit. They will begin next season at Step 6, playing in the Kitchen Kit South West Peninsula League Premier West, and looking forward to two big local derbies against Falmouth Town. When they met in a cup game a few seasons ago I tried, without success, to coin the name Fal Classico for this meeting of footballing minds. Now that that clash is back on the calendar, I shall begin that particular campaign again. You have been warned.
It also made them the “big scalp” in this cup clash, despite the fact that, when the 2020-21 league season was declared null and void a few months ago, Illogan RBL were top of the St Piran West Division with nine wins and a defeat from their ten games, while Penryn were only sixth, with five wins and a draw from their ten league matches. But they had had a superb run in the previous virus-truncated season and so were almost nailed on for promotion when the two campaigns were added together. There might be grumblings and queries from various quarters across the nation about the fairness of the whole restructuring but ‘Ryn are delighted to be heading on up. Congratulations to them.
And they made a bit of a point in the group stages of this competition by winning all four of their games, scoring 17 goals in the process and only conceding two. They then beat St Austell Reserves 3-1 in the quarter-finals. They will be competing against “Snozzell’s” first eleven next season.
Illogan, meanwhile, had finished second in their group, with three wins, a draw and a defeat from their five games before squeezing past Bude on penalties in the last eight. The question now was, could they pull off a minor cup shock by knocking their promoted opponents out of the cup?
They nearly did.
While Penryn started the match slowly, perhaps fazed by having so many spectators in the ground for the first time in ages, Illogan started on the front foot and deservedly took the lead with a far-post header after just seven minutes.
I can’t type the words “far post” without hearing in my memory the voice of my primary school football teacher from nearly 50 years ago, Mr Thomas, yelling those words from the touchline every time one of our wingers got the ball in an attacking position. At 10 and 11 years old, it was quite hard to kick the ball as far as the far post but we all tried to do as we were told. I was, at the time, a centre-forward but not of the goal-scoring type, more of the linking up play type, a false number nine if you will. I was, as ever, ahead of my time – mainly at this age because I didn’t really know what I was doing, although I did once score four goals for Applegarth Primary School in a game against Good Shepherd School in a Croydon League game. That was as good as it ever got and why I do sometimes go on about it!
The cry of “far post” also makes me think of one of our wingers, Andy White, who weighed about four stone dripping wet and who was always cold, even when it really wasn’t cold. I wonder whatever happened to him. Andy, if by some chance you ever read this, get in touch, let me know if ever warmed up!
Despite the sunshine, it was colder than it looked at Underlane on Saturday because of the wind and poor old Andy would have been frozen. Hopefully the action on the pitch would have warmed him up, especially in the first 20 minutes, as Penryn hit back after conceding that goal to take the lead through a penalty and a twist, turn and shot from inside the box. This was a cup tie that really was on fire and was really appreciated by the spectators lucky enough to be there.
Things got a little more raucous in parts of the crowd as the game moved on and the beers piled up, culminating in one fan losing control of his dog, which promptly ran onto the pitch and burst the ball as Illogan prepared to take a corner. “Keep that dog off the pitch,” barked the ref. “You try holding back a Penryn dog,” came the fan’s reply, to much amusement from that quarter. It was all good-natured, though, and the dog never made a pitch reappearance, thankfully.
Without doubt, the big moment of the game came three minutes from time. The score was still 2-1 to Penryn despite Illogan pressing and looking dangerous from set-pieces, while ‘Ryn had gone close on the break a couple of times. But then, on 87 minutes, the ball started to drop from high, high up, set in sharp relief against the bright blue backdrop of the springtime sky. We could all see it clearly, but none as clearly as Penryn’s Morgan Vallejo. Thirty yards out from the Illogan goal, he watched the ball drop, shaped to hit it on the volley across his body and struck the falling football as sweetly as anyone ever could. It absolutely flew into the top corner of the net. What. A. Goal.
There were noises of admiration all round the ground, a spontaneous round of applause, and the Penryn lot went nuts. Completely nuts. They all piled in on Vallejo as he turned to celebrate, leaving him at the bottom of a heap of delighted, stunned, Penryn players. It was a simply fantastic moment, the sort of moment we all go to football matches to see.
Many years ago, on the other side of the country, I saw a player from Suffolk side Sudbury Town score with a magnificent strike from fully 40 yards on a freezing cold Tuesday night in Felixstowe. It was a goal that has always stuck with me over the years. Vallejo’s strike on Saturday might be the best non-league goal I have seen since then. It’s another that will be stored in my footballing memory banks for years to come, to be talked about whenever I am in a discussion about the best goals I have ever seen. Magnificent.
(Of course, it wasn’t as good as Gary Alexander’s 35-yard screamer for Millwall in the play-off final against Scunthorpe, nothing will ever beat that, but it was a good effort!)
A few minutes after Vallejo’s wonder strike, the final whistle went and Penryn’s place in the final was secured. Now they will want to end their stay at Step 7 by taking the silverware when they take on Polperro, who beat Hayle 4-2 in Saturday’s other semi-final.
For Illogan, their focus can now shift to preparing to chase the title next season in what will, hopefully, be the first-ever fully completed season in the St Piran League. A normal, uninterrupted campaign in 2021-22 would be as satisfying for everyone as paying to get into a game proved to be on Saturday.
It’s a funny old game in a funny old world, innit?
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