Mousehole 1-3 St Austell
Football is full of highs and lows. Four days after the euphoria of a last minute comeback win against Bishops Cleeve, Mousehole suffered the other end of the spectrum when they were booted out of the cup by a feisty St Austell team.
On a night when the mist was threatening to roll over the pitch it was the men in red who did the rolling as they moved on into the final. Almost from the first minute they were on top and a statistic of six shots to three showed that especially as those efforts brought two goals.
The first came in the eleventh minutes when Matt Searlee picked up a loose ball in the centre circle. He ran straight for the Mousehole goal with Julio Fresenda in pursuit. If this was the Premier League our Spanish maestro would have brought him down and taken the yellow but he tried to keep on the right side of the law. He was never catching the pacy forward and the Seagulls’ defensive line backed off. They backed off assuming Searlee would try to beat them but he looked up and saw Lewis Moyle fractionally off his line. That was all the invitation he needed to thwack an unstoppable drive over Moyle’s head and in off the underside of the bar.
Going in one nil down is nothing new to this Mousehole team so there no worries at that point, until things took a dark turn just before the half hour. James Ward went up for and, as always, won a header on the halfway line. As he and the St Austell forward went to get up Wardy used the face of his opponent to push himself up. Was it deliberate? Was it simply eagerness to rejoin the fray and totally accidental? The referee deemed it the former and showed Wardy a red card.
That it was a bad night for our mountainous defender was obvious as he stalked off but it also curtailed the return to starting action of Ross Derham as he was sacrificed to bring on Jack Calver as replacement for the early-showering Ward.
Bad turned worse when a hopeful punt forward bounced awkwardly in the box. Jacob Kevern and Lewis Moyle waited for each other clear it and in nipped Adam Carter to loft it in to the net.
Seagulls fans will remember a performance away at Thatcham which had the same half time score and ended in a famous three two win so not all was lost as the players trudged off.
Playing with ten men did not stop Mousehole from controlling much of the second half. There was occasional scare but mostly it was turquoise shirts pushing for an opening. The St Austell defence stood firm and as the hour passed it looked like this would be the end of our cup run.
After sixty seven minutes Fresneda changed the mood when he smashed a shot in to the top corner after a neat pass from Tim Nixon. The cheers were still ringing out in the cold night air and optimism was still cursing through the veins of the Seagulls’ fans when the game was ended as a contest just minute after the goal.
A through ball down the right looked to have been played with the recipient in an offside position but the linesman didn’t see it. The ball was crossed to a late arriving Keiran Bishop who nodded it home.
The thick red line held firm after that and the game fizzled out for a famous win for St Austell and an ignominious defeat for Mousehole. It’s time to concentrate on the league. Talking of which, the only bit of good news was that Wardy’s suspension would not be served in the Southern Leaague.
