Falmouth Town 1 – 2 Mousehole
Relegation six-pointers don’t come any bigger than this. Throw in the fact that these Cornish neighbours have a history and that there were several members of both squads who had previously worn the other shirt and you have a recipe for a big, with a capital b match.
Before kick-off there were just three points between the teams but Falmouth had two games in hand so if Mousehole wanted to push the Town into their rear-view mirror they had to win. The gut feel amongst fans was that Falmouth are a bogey team for the Seagulls but in fact it’s the other way round of late. Mousehole had won three and drawn two of the previous six encounters. The problem was that the single loss was a painful one on a horrible Boxing Day afternoon and the bitter taste of that hung heavy in the air as the sides emerged on a totally different day.
The sun was out and there was a joyous Bank Holiday atmosphere. Nearly eight hundred packed the ground with the tension further ramped up by the Mousehole Vuvuzelas!
The half began with the ball mainly in the Falmouth half but though they needed to keep their wits about them at the back they were able to counter quickly if not effectively. The first big chance fell to the hosts. A hoofed ball fell to their central midfielder who played it out to the left. The winger took it in his stride, and entered the box to be faced by a quickly advancing Chenoweth. The keeper didn’t get a hand to the shot but did enough to force the forward to screw his shot wide when he should have done better.
The closest Mousehole came to breaking the deadlock came from a long Harris throw in on the right. With the wind at his back his throw landed in the box, bounced up and over the defence and landed in the goal. The men in green and white cheered for a goal but the referee rightly ruled that no one had touched it on the way in, so no goal.
The first goal, when it came on the half hour, was a beaut. Ed Harrison ripped a pass across the pitch from left to right. Jack Symons controlled it first time and began a hazy run towards the box. Step-overs and chops flummoxed the defence enough to give him space to curl a lovely left footer into the far corner.
Falmouth should have equalised less than ten minutes later. A hoofed ball up the left found their winger who did well to get into the box and pull it back into the danger area. A little bit of pinball finished with the ball at the feet of a forward only six yards out. With a clear sight of goal, he smashed it high and wide.
That error proved costly just before half time when Mousehole showed the F-Troop how Barcelona do it. Cairo to Mitchell, to Nixon, to Turner. Turner took it inside, beat his man and then lathered it home inside the keeper’s near post. The game should have been done and dusted when Mitchell created a chance from nothing on the edge of the box. He clipped it over the keeper but agonisingly over the bar.
This left Falmouth with the crumbs of a comeback to aim for in the second half but as they trooped off they knew they’d been taught a football lesson, not just in slick passing but in true grit. Your correspondent’s favourite moment of the first half was Alex Cairo chasing fifty yards back to dispossess Seagull old boy, Oscar Massey, quite legally, but leaving him in a heap of his own despair.
The second half was about game management. Something this Mousehole team have recently acquired. Falmouth created little but what they did was easily repelled. Mousehole, it has to be said, rarely threatened to increase their lead but they didn’t need to. You only get three points whatever the score. When the Falmouth centre forward was shown a red card for smashing Ed Harrison in the throat the game was over. A late consolation penalty, incorrectly awarded for a challenge just outside the box, could not hide the gulf in class between these two teams. Having said that, we should hope that the F-Troop are still with us next season. The party don’t start till they walk in, albeit it’s often over once the vuvuzelas pipe up.
