Farce as Monday Games Fail

Neither of the re-scheduled Easter Monday games was played due to the away sides being unable to field teams. This is not a great surprise. Paignton were never likely to find a team to travel all the way to Penzance on a holiday. Amateur players have to work. Newquay had played and been defeated heavily by 36:5 to Pirates at home on Saturday. How were they expected to raise a team to play St Ives just three days later during the same holiday weekend? The programme writer was always dubious.

However, The Hornets brought ten players in order to fulfil the fixture, hoping to escape the adverse judgement of the Cornwall RFU. St Ives 'lent' players so that a game could be played; a couple of 'halves' of about 20 minutes. The points were already awarded to The Hakes before kick-off. People who paid to watch the match were understandably disappointed. I heard of one poor soul who also paid for an unnecessary parking ticket on top of the match ticket fee!

Talk around the ground and in the club house was about the consequences to point’s difference between us and Withycombe. Our third place rivals, now three games in hand and ten points adrift, defeated Newquay 69:5 on 5th March. It is our understanding that these points will be null and void in the event that they make any difference to either team’s promotion prospects.

Hornets played an understandable game to avoid losing points at the start of next season, something we are fully aware of. Meanwhile, St Ives’ players escaped injury and had a bit of a run out, prior to the away game at Bodmin next Saturday.