Page 20 - Ashton & Backwell FC v Mousehole 220122

Today’s Visitors

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 record-
breaking 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