Thursday 17th April 2025 ko 19:45

South West Peninsula League Premier West

NEWQUAY AFC 5 (Price 18 31 MacConie 81 Cole 90+2)

WENDRON UNITED 0

Att 1,854

Advance Ticket for all games on the hop £55

Entry £6

Programme £3

This year’s South West Peninsula League Hop was especially interesting on a few levels. The first was that the hop wasn’t just in the Peninsula League, organiser Phil Hiscox had decided to take in clubs in both the National League South and the St Piran Leagues. It certainly added more colour to an always excellent event.

The second point of interest was that as always it was organised by league general secretary Phil, and not by ourselves at GroundhopUK, and one or two hosts clubs didn’t seem to have picked up on the distinction! I certainly have no interest in GroundhopUK being “the only show in town,” and its the differences between how he does things and how we do that are interesting, and there’s always something to learn.

The most obvious difference in the way that Phil does things is that his advance ticketing doesn’t include matchday programmes. Now if you’re reading this as a non-groundhopper I suspect you’ll think I’m dealing in semantics, but groundhoppers do get extremely warm under their collars about programmes, so every single game on this event saw a gaggle of the more enthusiastic types at the turnstiles hours before kick-off. To give you an idea of just how early Robyn and I were enjoying our evening meal at Quintrell Downs when we were called to be asked whether we wanted our programmes bought for us?

I’m grateful for the offer, I really am but it did make me think that only once over the long history of Phil’s Hops have the programmes ever run out- at Perranporth in 2010 and that was under pretty unusual circumstances- the printer thought the club needed 40 copies, not the 400 they ordered… If nothing else it does reinforce the value of the time spent assembling programme packs on our events!

Robyn and I arrived at Mount Wise just over an hour before kick-off and already the place was heaving. That was no surprise, the game was of huge significance, with Newquay needing just a point to secure the Premier West title and with it promotion to the Western League Premier Division- for the first time in their history. I did find that slightly surprising, I’d watched Newquay during their South Western League days, and found Mount Wise impressive enough to imagine it hosting a far higher level of football.

The club coped admirably with the huge crowds, perhaps the largest ever seen at a hop event in the UK, albeit with the caveat that only a small percentage of the crowd were at any other of the games scheduled over Easter as part of the hop.

I certainly didn’t expect the scoreline, Wendron are a decent side, and an excellent club, who could forget their hop game in 2016? I expected a tight, nervy game but as soon Louis Price notched the Peppermints’ first the hosts swaggered to a win and the championship. For me though it was as impressive off the pitch as it had been on it. I picked my way along a dark alleyway back to the car enjoying listening the rejoicing back at the ground.