Sticker Reserves 0 Illogan RBL 5
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
EVERYONE HAS A HOBBY, DON’T THEY? Whether it’s stamp-collecting, writing bad poetry, baking cakes, collecting antique vases or hoarding masses of model frogs, we all have something that takes us away from the humdrum, from the everyday, into a world where we can be enthralled and excited and entranced, a world in which we can all be experts.
Football, especially the Non-League game, has more than its fair share of people who don’t really go to the game for, well, the game, but for countless other reasons. Groundhopping. Programme collecting. Buying another badge from another club.
And we all judge them.
Groundhoppers? Pah! What do they really know about football? They are only interested in where the bar is, what the grandstand looks like, how much a cup of tea is. They probably don’t even know who won the game.
Programme collectors. Why? They will just be left with piles and piles of out-of-date magazines and factsheets which will, in the end, all be thrown away or passed on. What is the point?
And the badge people. Honestly, they are worse than train spotters. Who needs a badge? Just watch the bloody game.
But, of course, everyone who judges them is wrong.
As long as people are going to games, spending money, sharing their thoughts and views on whatever footballing subject really matters to them with like-minded hobbyist souls, then where is the harm? What is the problem? Answer: There is no problem, just let them get on with it. If a groundhopper decides a ground doesn’t count as a tick because it was a goalless draw or a reserve game, who does that harm, who needs to judge their decision?
If someone will not go to a game because no printed programme is being produced or because there are no metal badges for sale in the club shop, well, that’s their choice. Who are we, who is anyone, to try to coerce them to change their mind? Who are we to ridicule them?
All these hobbies, all these curious little quirks of the football-spectating fraternity, have one massive benefit for Non-League clubs – they bring in money and, in the world of local football, a couple of quid for a badge or a programme can make all the difference. Every penny counts.
So here is my confession of footballing nerdism. I am not a groundhopper, although I like going to new grounds. I am not a programme collector, although I don’t mind having a look at one if a programme is available. And I am not a badge collector, although I do have a Millwall FC Poppy Appeal badge from last season and another one supporting prostate cancer research.
No, my bag is football cups. Not the mug-type cups out of which you drink your tea but the actual competition kind, everything from the FA Cup to the FA Vase to, of course, the Kitchen Kit South West Peninsula League Walter C Parson Funeral Directors League Cup.
That’s why, on a wet Tuesday night in September, instead of being snug at home or cosy in a pub watching the Champions League on the telly, I was on the road to Burngullow Park, the home of Sticker FC, for the second time in two weeks. Not for me the lure of Lionel Messi and Paris St Germain, or Mo Salah and Liverpool. Oh no. The lure of the game for me on this particular evening was a new cup, a brand new competition. Whoo hoo!
This competition was the Cornwall Intermediate Cup, a knockout tournament introduced in the Duchy this season, and it has had a bit of a difficult birth.
Introduced as a result of the national reorganisation of the Non-League game across England, which saw four Cornish teams “upwardly moved” to the Step Five Toolstation Western League, it has not been hugely welcomed by many in the Cornwall footballing world, if some of the comments on local internet forums are to be believed.
Previously, Cornwall just had the Senior Cup and the Junior Cup, with the former catering for teams in the Peninsula, Combination and East Cornwall Premier leagues and the latter for the grassroots game across the county. Both cups had history and were deeply ingrained in the local football psyche. The clubs from the Combo and ECPL loved pitting their wits against the “big boys” of the SWPL in the Senior Cup, although they never really had much chance of lifting silverware, while the Junior Cup gave – and, as it remains unchanged, still does give – park footballers the chance to revel in the most glory they are ever likely to enjoy.
But, with the introduction of a new league, the St Piran League, at Step Seven and teams being moved every which way to fill the national FA’s restructuring remit, the Cornwall FA felt the old set-up didn’t reflect the new reality. And so it introduced a new competition, the Intermediate Cup, to be competed for by sides in the St Piran League, the Combo and ECPL.
It makes sense to me, and definitely gives the competing teams a better chance of winning countywide silverware, but many clubs and supporters remain to be convinced. Let’s see how it pans out.
So, have you got all that? Basically, this was a cup tie in a new competition and I wanted to see it, I wanted to add a “tick” to my cup-hopping collection. And, as most of the other games in Round One were played on Saturday, it was almost as if they were holding this one back for me and it would have been rude not to go!
Sadly, not many others shared my enthusiasm and, at one stage, it felt like the crowd would barely make single figures (if I didn’t count me of course)! But a few more did rock up as kick-off approached but it was certainly a much sparser attendance than for the derby clash I had seen at Burngullow earlier in the month, when Sticky’s reserves beat the second string from their local rivals St Austell 4-1 in an SPL East Division encounter.
Mind you, the appalling weather on Tuesday night, coupled with the mass-panic-buying-of-fuel crisis, might have put off the spectating hordes. Well, you never know.
Still, this game promised much. Sticker Reserves started the evening in fifth place out of 14 teams in the SPL East, while visitors Illogan RBL were seventh of 16 in the SPL West. It was an intriguing East v West tie and I expected it to be a close, hard-fought encounter. Sadly for me and the proponents of the new cup, it didn’t turn out that way. It was not a cup classic.
Things started brightly enough, with loads of energy on the pitch and all the normal cat-calls and well-worn phrases of local football being given their usual airing. In fact, one of my favourite plaintive cries, that of “How many, ref?” was produced at some volume inside the first ten minutes of the match, quite possibly the earliest I have ever heard it yelled in a match. Incidentally, the answer, by my count, was one and the ref decided that that one wasn’t enough to merit a yellow card. He was right.
For 35 minutes, the game was fairly even, albeit short on chances, but then the visitors stepped up a gear and it was an acceleration with which the hosts could not live. The opening goal came when a corner from the right (it might actually have been a free-kick in the corner, it was hard to tell through the rain from where I was) was not cleared. It was eventually crossed back in from the left and it was a simple strike home for an unmarked Illogan player in the middle.
One-nil became two-nil six minutes later with a far-post volley from another left-wing cross and the visitors were three goals to the good on the stroke of half-time when a tidy move on the right ended with a deflected shot finding the net.
Any hopes of a Sticky comeback ended early in the second half when Illogan broke down the left and a low cross was easy enough for the onrushing forward to slide in. The fifth and final goal came on 66 minutes with a direct effort from a free-kick on the edge of the box.
With all the drama and tension now sucked from the cup tie, I spent much of the second half talking to Sticker club secretary Chris Osborne, who was standing next to me and who was on paperwork duty for the night. His main hope now was that Illogan wouldn’t score any more, a wish which came true mainly due to some profligate finishing by the visitors. He had long given up hope of Sticky getting a goal back, a prediction which proved unerringly accurate. The young hosts huffed and puffed but never really looked like scoring.
Instead, the interest in the evening was listening to Chris, one of those long-serving club volunteers of a certain age who keep local football going. He went through all the complaints and issues I had heard so many times before, about how much of his time was taken up with football issues, about the costs of officials, about the future of the game at this level, about getting players to pay their fines for bookings.
And yet he was still there, turning out on an evil Tuesday night to do all the things that needed doing, the things that get the game on in the first place, the things that no one really notices but without which there would be no football. It can only be called a labour of love and all of us – players, officials and supporters – owe people like Chris a great debt of gratitude.
His dedication, and that of thousands of similar volunteers up and down the country, means that football fans, groundhoppers, badge enthusiasts and even cup collectors like me, can all indulge our passions, our hobbies, our strange little footballing foibles. We can collect our grounds, our badges, our ticks. So thank you Chris, and the thousands like you. The game just wouldn’t be the same without you.
PICTURES: Search for “Peter Harlow” on Facebook and there you will find a selection of fuzzy snapshots taken on my phone.