Page 28 - Keynsham Town FC v Mousehole 230422

Founded in 1922, the club’s green jerseys were based on
the local Keigwin family coat of arms. With no suitable
flat ground available in the steep-sided harbour village,
matches were played half a mile away at the top of
Raginnis Hill. According to one match report, this venue
was “…..wild and wayward, a veritable ‘hell fire corner,’
with a blustery bully of
a wind blowing up from Land’s End…..”
For the first few decades, Mousehole AFC were
nicknamed The Fishermen – later The Seagulls, as now - and the sea,
visible from all the places they have called home, has played a prominent
role in its history.
In the mid-1920s, local fishermen out in their boats would be alerted of the
team’s result via a flag mast from a house named White Hall. For an
important League Cup tie in 1953, Leslie Torrie, arriving back after days at
sea on the Lyonesse, was whisked away in a car driven by goalkeeper Owen
Ladner, up to Raginnis where he then scored the winning goal against
Helston. The team also featured Leslie’s brother Basil, described as “filling
up the middle of the field like a row of houses”.
The post-war years were an exciting time for the club. The Mousehole
Carnival, the resurrection of Tom Bowcock’s Eve, and a thriving HQ in Duck
Street - previously a site on which millions of pilchards had been cured and
exported - kept them on a healthy financial footing and spirits high. The
team of the 1950s, “….slippery as eels, tough as congers, as tenacious as
lampreys…..” even entered the prestigious FA Amateur Cup on six
occasions.
For two seasons Mousehole played at Barwinney Park, behind the King’s
Arms Pub in Paul, but, unable to secure it as a permanent venue, they
moved back to Raginnis. In the early 1950s the reclamation of marshland
at Trungle Moor on the rural outskirts of Paul was first mooted, but the club
did not move there until 1960……their home to this day.
Mousehole were continuous members of the Cornwall Combination League
from 1960 until 2007. They won a couple of Cup competitions along the
way, but a doubly significant milestone was a friendly match against Alex
Ferguson’s Manchester United in August 1987 to celebrate the purchase of
the freehold of the six-acre site. This was the successful culmination of a
persistent campaign (since 1971!) by John Payne, aka “Billy Boot.
In 2007, Mousehole’s First Team finished high enough to qualify for the
newly-formed South West Peninsula League. Members of Division One
West, they were recordbreaking Champions in 2015-16, as well as
capturing the Cornwall Charity Cup (a Cup they won again two seasons
later).
Energised by this taste of success, the club launched a new strategy in 2017
to progress in an ambitious, financially sound and sustainable way. This
included major development of the ground facilities, support for the First