St Buryan 0 Ruan Minor 5
Whirlwind Sports Trelawny League Percy Stephens Cup Third Round
DATELINE: The Community House, Newlyn Road, St Buryan, Saturday, February 23, 2019
MATCH SUMMARY: A shock was always on the cards here, with St Buryan struggling at the wrong end of the Trelawny League Premier Division while Ruan Minor have 14 wins and two draws from their 16 games in Division Two, and so it proved. The hosts looked lively at the start but the visitors took the lead after just six minutes and always looked the most likely from then on. They doubled their lead ten minutes after the interval but Buryan had a great chance to get back in the game just eight minutes later when they were awarded a penalty. However, the visiting keeper pulled off a top save and that was really the hosts’ last chance as three goals in the last 15 minutes sealed a deserved victory for Ruan Minor.
THE BLOG: Some days, every thing you do just works perfectly, everything slots into place nicely, everything you touch turns to metaphorical gold. On other days, the exact opposite applies. For St Buryan on Saturday, it was one of those days when nothing worked. I had some sympathy for them – my day wasn’t exactly going to plan either.
First of all, I was in the wrong place.
Well, sort of.
A few years ago, I used to do some volunteering for Cornwall Wildlife Trust, which involved spending hours on the dramatic cliffs at Gwennap Head, just along the coast from Land’s End, counting and recording basking sharks. On the drive there each week, I would pass a football and cricket ground and promised myself that, one day, I would go to watch a game there.
In my head, that ground was the home of St Buryan and so, when I saw they were at home in an interesting-sounding cup tie in the Percy Stephens Cup, I thought my chance had come.
Even when putting the address into Google to check the directions and the time it would take to get there, the penny still didn’t drop. It was only as I turned off the main road through the village to reach the wonderfully named Community House where Buryan actually do play, that I realised I was thinking of somewhere else entirely.
After the match, I headed down the Land’s End road until I found the ground I had meant. It was St Levan.
I don’t think they exist as a team any more, although they were still goal nets on site as I drove past so some football is played there. I was glad to have cleared up that ground confusion in my head.
Another thing that didn’t do what it was supposed to do was the weather.
The news and forecasters have all been full of stories about how mild, even sunny, it has been for February and, as I left home in almost spring-like conditions, I wondered about the wisdom of taking with me my big coat and my woolly hat. I was happy that I did, in the end, as St Buryan obviously hadn’t been listening to the meteorologists.
As I got closer and closer to the ground, the skies became greyer and greyer, the mist and drizzle descended and, just as the game kicked off, the rain started. It was the kind of insistent drizzle that people love to say “makes you wet”. I am not sure what other type of rain there is but I think I know what they mean. It was certainly enough to make my notebook wet and to make me decide to take some shelter on the verandah of The Community House for much of the first half.
In properly annoying style, the rain eased in the second half, then stopped altogether and, for the final ten minutes, there was blue sky and sunshine. I even took my hat off.
However, whatever the weather did, it couldn’t clear the clouds hanging over St Buryan’s season and high-flying Ruan Minor were in no mood to ease the storm.
The home side did, however, start the brighter and played well enough in the first few minutes to make me wonder if the gap in divisions would be reflected in the standard of the teams on show. But it only took six minutes for Ruan, who are based on the Lizard Peninsula, to take the lead and the signs for the home side were already ominous.
The visitors were generally stronger physically and they were also able to call on a number of subs while the home team could only muster the one. It was clear from very early on that the twelve men were going to have a tough time of it.
Ruan should have been 2-0 up midway through the half but, after a horrible mix-up in the St Buryan defence, a black-and-white-shirted Ruan player managed to hit the bar with the goal gaping. It wasn’t quite a Ronnie Rosenthal moment but it did bring smiles and hoots of derision from those watching. It was a good miss!
On the stroke of half-time, the visitors were convinced they should have had a penalty when a ball across the face of the goal bounced up as a defender tried to clear it off the line. Watching through my mizzle-misted glasses it certainly looked as if it had hit the player’s hand and should have been a pen but the ref waved it away. Ruan were still chuntering about that as they came off for the break.
Ten minutes after the interval the chuntering had a St Buryan-blue tinge instead.
They were convinced they should have been given a free-kick for a challenge in midfield but, again, the ref disagreed and Ruan Minor took full advantage with one of the neatest moves of the match which ended with a second tap-in and a 2-0 lead.
Game over?
Not quite. The home side were, at this stage, having one of their better spells of the game and still carried a threat, especially through their lively left-winger. Sure enough, on 63 minutes, his mazy run into the box was ended in unceremonious style and the ref pointed to the spot. Definitely a penalty this time.
But the home side couldn’t make the most of it as the visiting keeper dived low to his left to pull off a fine save and keep his clean sheet intact.
And it proved to be a real turning point as Ruan reacted to the scare by going up a gear and they were never really under pressure again. They had a goal disallowed for a push almost immediately after the penalty save and, five minutes later, they saw another effort chalked off when the ref pulled the game back to give them a free-kick instead. Their mood wasn’t helped by the fact that he only showed a yellow card to the last-man defender who had committed the foul, rather than a red.
But nothing was going to rain on the Ruan parade and, with 13 minutes to go and the blue sky breaking through, the ball fell to a forward in the box after another tidy move and he made no mistake to make it 3-0.
Now, because I am an anorak, and because I like a bit of symmetry in my life, I would love the scoring to have ended there. You see, Ruan Minor had reached this stage of the cup with a first-round bye and then a 3-0 second round win over Chacewater, while St Buryan had scored 3-0 wins over Frogpool & Cusgarne (that’s only one team!) and St Keverne. So another 3-0 would have had a nice shape to it.
I actually got a bit nervous as the clock ticked on as, instead of cheering on either team I was cheering on a scoreline, but the lively Ruan Minor number 26 ruined the moment by notching a fourth in 81st minute.
See, something else that hadn’t gone to plan!
And it went even less to plan when, with the final kick of the game, the visitors netted their fifth. Symmetry well and truly ruined.
But that mattered not a jot to the deserving winners who drove off into the spring sunshine as the owners of a very tidy cup upset (a Minor one, not a major one, you might say), while St Buryan went back into The Community House under a bit of a cloud.
And I drove off to find out where I thought I should have been going but with a little bit of warmth in my heart as I had really enjoyed my visit to this part of West Cornwall. I forecast that I will return again soon, hopefully in brighter times for the home club.
Well, that’s the plan anyway.
THE PICTURES
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