Combo League: Same Old Hallowe'en Horror

[isaac rosenberg]

Why are my fellow Kernewek so willing to settle for standards of administration and rule that would be laughed at up in England? It does my poor grey head in (Boots prices for Grecian 2000 are outrageous and I've given it up for Feast). Every time I come home I go splenetic and have to be injected with Mogadon before I can lie down.

Inicidentally, this website is becoming deeply tedious. It might be down to the recent administrative changes which make it harder to post, so more of you don't bother. I must admit that the absence of Pendeen and Penzance from the league has reduced the amount I have to say (shame ). I can't get the same derby fire in my belly about the Hurlers of Fairfield. Their continued membership after a half-decade on the bottom while other clubs finished bottom once and were swept out of senior football epitomises the crooked history of the Combo League. But that history is not their fault ! They're doing well now! Fair play to them !

Anyway.....

My favourite club is currently on a run of SIX home games, which means I have to drive much further from Gloucestershire to watch them. This happens most years, because the league fixture secretary wants to ensure that we end the season with the runs of long away trips in the league, preferably on evenings, to minimise the chances of our being in the running for anything and to give us a couple of months with no revenue just when the big bills approach. Three, even four successive home or away fixtures can happen in properly run leagues, but not six, not on the best-drained pitch ever......

Everybody knows it's crooked. Unfortunately the usual mumbling goes on at meetings and representatives moan in the bar but vote in the same old, same old crusties in the meetings. Apparently that's how we belong to do things in Kernow. Don't take a decision. Wait for the Grim Reaper ? Wait for a benevolent Act of God ? IT'S A FARCE !

What should be done ? How did the Clancy Brothers put it in "The Patriot Game"? Listen to the song: its representation of the relationship between young participants in an activity and the corruption and graft that lets them down could be an object lesson for the Combination League.

A club secretary new in post was unable even to get contact numbers from the league to confirm games.

Some clubs are "politically influential" and some are not. As a case in point, when one of those club sides was relegated, its representative was co-opted as a life management committee officer ! The precedent is interesting: to be consistent, Pitty from Holmans should also join the Board (bit of a drive from Portsmouth to Wendron for meetings, admittedly). And what about folks from Carharrack, St Mawgan, Nanpean, Roche, Camborne School of Mines ?....the list goes on . Reductio ad absurdum, perhaps ? No more absurd than Vital and his merry men keeping on their mates because they like them and willmake sure that the clubs without "influence" stay that way.

In many cases, they don't even understand their own rule book......to be fair, the individual co-opted does bring intelligence and literacy to the table......

Dear old Holloway got in trouble for suggesting that in the Prem, big clubs got more crucial decisions from referees....statistics back him up. But he was fined for telling the truth. That's nothing. Galileo was persecuted and James Joyce and I were exiled !

In the ambitious and competitive little world of Combo League refereeing, the politically influential clubs need to be greased up to in just the same way. The league committee decide whom to invite to ref the semis and final of the Cups. So yesterday, in front of two League Management Committee members, both stalwart alumni of a favoured club, we had a Ray Tinkler Moment just as the gale was beginning to swing the game back in favour of the underdogs.

From 35 yards away in the wrong half of play, on an unsighted diagonal, the referee overruled the underdog club linesman's flag (not me, by the way, but the lino and I were both in line). the player was several yards offside. The resultant goal effectively ended the contest. Throughout the contest, the linesman of the influential club kept flapping his flag vaguely while the ball was played forward in the air, before there was any clear sense of which player might touch it next, yet every decision he hinted at was implemented by the referee.

We all make mistakes, but only a minority of referees are man or woman enough to admit it. Following this massive error, he lost control of the game. There were six substitutions and the ball went out of the ground about five times, so he blew his whistle on 91 minutes.

The biggest concern of the one of the county and league officials present was that there was subsequently some swearing. This is like viewing the post-war tarring and feathering of suspected Nazi collaborators as the worst actions ever committed in Paris.

I bet this ref is appointed at least to a semi-final ! A third party, nothing to do with either club playing yesterday, summed him up perfectly without even being told of yesterday's events beforehand:

"He was a good player in his day, but he gets bored reffing in the second half quite often, misses things, then starts throwing cards around to make sure he looks in control."

Just the kind of man to work well with the Combo management Committee, eh ? Maybe they should co-opt him too.

PS. I have deliberately avoided mentioning the name of the referee. Heaven forbid that we should tell the truth about referees, or anything else that is sometimes abysmal in Cornwall. It might show that our leadership in many areas of life is without merit and lead to change.

That would never do, would it ?!

[Bruegel the Elder]

Whether or not one agrees with the sentiments, another great piece of literature Isaac, you do your namesake proud.