Welcome back, cup football, I love you

Mousehole 3 Barnstaple Town 2 (after extra time)

FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round replay

Trungle Parc, Mousehole

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

You can’t keep a good blog down, as the old saying nearly goes, and what better way to get a new season of knockout football-writing started than by watching an FA Cup tie on a glorious summer’s evening in Cornwall during a heatwave? None that I can think of – and so I thought of nothing else and headed off to Mousehole. Well, Paul, near Mousehole to be exact. Let’s try to get our facts right here.

Now, anyone who has read my ramblings over the past few seasons will know that it is cup football that really gets my juices going. I have spectated at and written about cup games from all over Cornwall, and sometimes beyond, to try to persuade you, dear reader, that it is the most beautiful version of the most beautiful game. And if I had to pick one example of a match to try to prove my point, this contest, way down in the far west of Cornwall, the far west of Britain, might very well have been the one I would have chosen. It turned out to be an absolute crackerjack.

I am not sure, however, that the good folk of Barnstaple would agree. Having failed to beat their Toolstation Western League Premier Division rivals at the first time of asking up in North Devon, they were left facing a midweek 230-mile round trip to deepest Cornwall right in the heart of the summer tourist season when the Duchy’s roads are stretched to breaking point by the weight of all the extra holiday traffic.

Three hours there and three hours back was the estimated time I saw for their journey online. That’s an awful lot of commitment for a team playing at Step Five of the Non-League Pyramid system, the ninth tier of English football if you count from the Premier League downwards.

In fact, travel in the Western League has become a real issue over the last year, ever since more and more Cornish teams have made the step up to what used to be a generally Bristol-based league. And for those of you who think the “West Country” is one tight geographical region, I should inform you that, from my home in Penryn, near Falmouth, to Bristol is a distance of almost 180 miles, a bit more than the distance from London to Sheffield. That’s got you thinking, hasn’t it?

It has certainly got local football officials and the FA thinking and, from next season, it does look as if Step Five football in the wider South-West is going to be reorganised in order to prevent such a magnitude of miles being travelled.

It’s an interesting discussion to have with other people addicted to the delights of Non-League football but Tuesday night’s adventure was not all about this league reconstruction malarkey, it was all about cup football, all about the FA Cup, all about THE cup.

OK, so Trungle Parc, Mousehole on a Tuesday night is a long way from the megastars of Liverpool and Chelsea slugging it out in last season’s final at Wembley just three months ago, but there is still nothing more exciting for a cup football fan than an FA Cup tie at any stage of the competition. There is, quite simply, nothing like it.

So I was excited even before I got there and was then even more excited when an official was directing you a) to a car park and b) to a car park in a field you hadn’t parked in for a game before. That’s always a sign at this level that a big match is afoot!

And then there was the joy of setting foot in Trungle Parc, a ground that has improved out of sight since I first went there many years ago when it was a very basic ground in a field. Now there’s a new entrance, a new covered standing area behind one goal, fencing all around the perimeter and a general air of a club on the up. The fact that the area behind the goal is called the Solomon Browne Stand also added poignancy to the occasion and reminded even me that cup football isn’t everything.

The Solomon Browne was the Penlee lifeboat, based in Mousehole, which sank with all hands onboard when trying to rescue a coaster called the Union Star in atrocious conditions in December 1981. It is a disaster which still haunts the village and Mousehole FC has long had a close connection with the RNLI, even displaying its logo on the sleeves of their shirts this season. It was the first time I had seen the stand behind the goal and thought that naming it the Solomon Browne Stand was a fantastic and touching gesture. Well done, Mousehole FC.

Having got that moment of reflection out of my head, I was forced into my first laugh of the season when the PA announcer, in a vain attempt to whip the 321 paying souls at the game into an American-style frenzy of anticipation, roared into the microphone as the two teams emerged onto the pitch: “Let’s get ready to Trungle!” I love that kind of nonsense, in a bizarre, Dad-joke kind of way.

Then, of course, the actual action got under way and it was the home fans who were smiling just four minutes in when Tallan Mitchell slotted home the opener for the home side from the penalty spot after a clumsy challenge in the box. The tackle wasn’t much of anything but it was enough to see the forward go down and the ref had little choice but to point to the spot. There were the regulation arguments from the Barnstaple contingent but their hearts weren’t really in it – they knew it was a pen.

Mousehole play some lovely, if slightly frustrating, modern football at times, with lots and lots of passing and not so much lumping it into the opposition box, which is more the old-fashioned style I understand. And yet, for all their pretty tippy-tappy stuff, their second goal came from a proper old style cup scramble in the penalty area, the ball finally being forced over the line by Andy Watkins. I am more at home with that kind of goal!

So, 32 minutes gone and 2-0 to Mousehole. I tried to turn into a soothsayer and predict the future by writing in my notebook: “It already looks a long way home for Barnstaple in so many different ways.” Seven minutes later, Barnstaple pulled a goal back through Matt Andrew and it was game on again. I perhaps should keep my predictions to myself!

The first half ended in crazy fashion and proved once again that you never know what you might see at a football match. A Mousehole attack seemed to have fizzled out as the ball rolled over the byline. Barnstaple were plainly expecting a goal-kick and the keeper wandered over to pick up the loose ball. But some of the home players noticed that the lino was indicating a corner, while the ref just stood on the edge of the 18-yard box without making any signal that I saw.

So, with the keeper stranded in no-man’s land as he couldn’t work out whether to keep going to collect the ball or rush back to his goal, Mousehole played a quick corner across the six-yard box and it was tapped home into the empty net. Cue shrieks of joy from the home side, who thought they might have cheekily gone 3-1 up, howls of rage from the visitors, who thought they had been the victims of a sucker punch, and then a slight pause while the ref and the lino looked at one another.

They then consulted each other properly, surrounded by shouting players, before deciding that it wasn’t a goal but was a goal-kick. Cue more mayhem and arguing but the goal was chalked off and the score remained 2-1.

Just for the record, I thought it was neither a corner nor a goal-kick. I think the Mousehole forward had been blatantly shoved in the back and it should have been another home penalty. Where is VAR when you really need it?!

Having spent much of the first half chasing Mousehole shadows, Barnstaple switched things up at the start of the second half, knocked the home side off their stride and started to dominate proceedings. They were duly rewarded when a rocket from the edge of the box by Callum Laird levelled things up at two-all and sent this cracker of a cup tie into extra time.

Now, normally, I would have been delighted by the prospect of an extra 30 minutes of cup football but I had to be up at 6am the next morning for work and still faced a 45-minute drive home after the game. OK, that wasn’t as bad as the situation was for the Barnstaple players and fans, but they were already resigned to getting home late so I don’t think it made that much difference to them.

Extra time was quite open, not the sometimes nervy and stale affair that it can be, but still nobody could break the deadlock and the dreaded penalties were looming. At this rate, I might not get any sleep at all! But, on the plus side, it was good value for money and was the second consecutive match where I had got more game for my buck as, in my previous outing, I had watched England beat Spain after extra time in the quarter-finals of the Women’s Euro 22 tournament.

That was a tremendous sporting occasion, settled by a thunderbolt by England midfielder Georgia Stanway. The winner this time, which thankfully saved us from the dreaded shootout, wasn’t quite as spectacular but it was still a fine effort by Mousehole’s Reece Thomson to bundle home the winner from a rebound after a brilliant first save by the Barnstaple keeper.

Both sides also hit the woodwork in extra time but, in the end, it was the home side who prevailed, making the visitors’ journey back to Barnstaple feel even longer that it actually was. But it was a cracking start to my 2022-23 season cup football journey and I think I might have to travel many a mile before finding a game as thrilling as this one. What a way to start.

FOOTNOTE: If you want to see pictures from this match, head to Peter Harlow on Facebook or @cupfootball blog on Twitter. Mousehole’s YouTube channel also has video from the match.