Friday 29th March 2024 ko 19:00

South West Peninsula League Premier West

HOLSWORTHY 0

BUDE TOWN 0

Att 906

Entry £6

Programme £1

If there was one of the Good Friday Peninsula Hop games in danger of postponement it was definitely Holsworthy. We’d all seen their tweets worrying about a section of the pitch, advising on a 4pm inspection and asking if anyone had a heater they could borrow, but sometimes as a groundhopper you have a decision to make.

It comes down to whether you’re a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of a person. You could harangue the club on social media, give up and go home, or you could take the “Que Sera” view and just go for it. Those like me who did, were amply rewarded for it too. We arrived to find a tent and heater over the dodgy patch of pitch and thankfully it worked, perhaps there was too much riding on it all for it to fail.

The game was a massive derby with the added spice of being a cross-border Devon/Cornwall skirmish too. It was always going to attract a crowd over and above even a Friday/Saturday evening on an organised hop. The club clearly knew that and acted accordingly. People were instructed to park in town centre car parks, and the normal catering was augemented by a Farmers Direct barbecue. Even the PA and music was beefed-up (!) by the wonderfully named “Disco In Kernow.” I’m sure that wasn’t aimed at the hoppers, but we enjoyed the name, if nothing else.

But a crowd of over 900 at Step 6 is exceptional by anyone’s standards and made what was always going to be an interesting game, into an unforgettable evening. Ciders were bought and consumed in bewildering quantities, and that’s coming from someone who is married to a girl from Bristol! It was hard to find a spot to watch the game but once you did, hoppers and local fans mingled and the meeting of two types of football fan was at times extremely amusing. For the record, I have no idea how Phil Hiscox managed to count the crowd!

Smoke bombs were let off, the atmosphere crackled, and two honest sides slugged out a goal-less draw that on another day either could have won. If you were there, I’d suggest the lack of goals was the last thing on anyone’s mind. It was a privilege just to be there, to the point that as I strolled back to the car, as the scene changed to that of a quiet Devonian town, I glanced back to the floodlights and the blue smoke; it had been quite an evening, hadn’t it?