Falmouth Town's Cornwall Senior Cup crown is latest cup triumph

That seems fairly obvious when you think about it. A league is normally a round-robin competition where all given teams or players face each other a set number of times across a given time period.

Playing every other opponent is a far fairer and more logical way to determine where you rank in a certain group, especially when the league is over a longer time period that lessens the impact of any issues like poor form or injury/illness.

Cup games, on the other hand, are not. A cup competition will often see a team or player face only a small handful of the other competitors, with it often being luck of the draw that dictates which of those they face.

Cups aren’t a good barometer of a team’s capability because any team can play out of their skin against another in a one-off game.

Take a look at the World Snooker Championship this week. James Cahill, an amateur, managed to beat Ronnie O’Sullivan, world number one and the greatest player to play the game.

Is Cahill better than O’Sullivan? No, he isn’t. He benefited from a slightly unwell Ronnie having a bad day at the office.

Cahill has got further in the tournament but that doesn’t make him a better player. He beat him in one match whereas Ronnie is ranked number one in the world, using a system that takes into account many results against many players over the past two years.

The uncertainties of cup competitions are no match for the consistency of a league table.

Yet Falmouth Town are an exception to this rule. They consistently excel in cup matches and thrive on the pressure that a one-off cup game can produce, and they do it time and time again.

Their Cornwall Senior Cup triumph over Saltash United on Easter Monday was the latest in a long line of sterling cup performances.

It was certainly no flash in the pan, in fact it was their second big cup triumph in as many seasons after lifting the Carlsberg Walter C Parson Funeral Directors South West Peninsula League Cup (let's call it the League Cup).

But their league form has not been of the standard manager Andrew Westgarth and assistants Charlie Davis and James Miller will have hoped for, following last season’s excellent third-place finish in the SWPL Premier.

A sixth-place finish is the best they can do this season, and defeat to Millbrook in their final game on Saturday may yet see them finish below one of the poorest Bodmin Town sides in recent history.

A mixture of injuries in key positions and a brutal run of fixtures in November and December – when they lost to each of the top three of Exmouth Town, Tavistock and Plymouth Argyle – saw their hopes of another top-three finish all but over by Christmas as Town slipped into the ‘also-rans’ category alongside Torpoint Athletic, Cullompton Rangers and Saturday’s opponents Millbrook for more or less the rest of the campaign.

But whenever a cup match rolls around, Town are a different side. It is like their problems don’t even exist anymore.

Falmouth’s league record this year reads: Played 35, Won 18, Drawn 3, Lost 18. Compare that to their cup record this season which reads: Played 14, Won 13, Drawn 0, Lost 1.

They have nearly won as many games in cups as they have in the league, despite playing less than half as many cup matches as league games.

The numbers get even more extraordinary when you take a look at Falmouth’s form over the last five months.

Since November their league form reads: Played 19, Won 7, Drawn 3, Lost 9. Their cup form since November reads: Played 9, Won 8, Drawn 0, Lost 1.

Town have won more cup matches than league matches since the start of November despite playing less than half as many cup games in that time.

Furthermore, six of Falmouth’s cup wins this season have come against five teams from the same division: St Austell (twice), Saltash, Launceston, Cullompton Rangers and Helston Athletic.

Town have lost to all five of those teams at least once in the league.

That is remarkable.

There is a good chance that the players are not going to be as motivated for league games after falling out of the title race, but the team’s ability to just flick the switch and turn it on when a cup tie comes around is very impressive.

The injury problems that contributed to their league downfall this season have, surprisingly, been another key to Town’s success. They are simply brilliant at using adversity to their advantage.

The headline in their personnel problems this year has been the lack of an out-and-out striker for almost the entire campaign. Jordan Annear signed for Plymouth Parkway, Matt Buchan suffered a recurring hamstring injury, Jack Bowyer was unavailable due to an intensive police training programme and poor old Rob Wearne suffered another anterior cruciate ligament injury.

The absence of each of these four big players blighted their league campaign, but in a cup game it almost didn’t matter. They just kept going through round after round in the different cups regardless.

Their huge cup results have all come in the face of adversity in some form. Monday’s cup win, for example, came after falling behind in the third minute of the game.

Last year’s League Cup final triumph over Tavistock came after going a goal down and then conceding a late equaliser to face extra-time.

Last year’s semi-final win over Godolphin Atlantic came after going 2-1 down.

Both of this season’s Senior Cup semi-final and League Cup quarter-final wins came against an in-form St Austell side when Falmouth themselves were in poor form.

Their Senior Cup second round victory over St Dennis this season came after they went a goal down.

The League Cup second round win at home to Helston Athletic came after they went two goals down.

Their League Cup third round win this year at home to Brixham came after they went a goal down.

To bounce back from one of those is difficult. To bounce back from two is quite a challenge. To do it repeatedly, as Town have made quite the habit of doing, is just stunning.

This never-say-die attitude is driven by Westgarth, who has never denied his love for a cup competition. He has said before that he wanted to win the Senior Cup as Falmouth manager, so he went and did it.

That seems to be very much the Falmouth mentality these days. “We want this, so we’re going to get it, and we’re not going to let anything stop us.”

It doesn’t matter whether it is players leaving the club or getting injured, or having no recognised striker in the team, or disappointing league results, or falling behind in games. They still went and won the most prestigious cup in the county, and they may win another yet.

“Westy” would have been the proudest man at Bodmin’s Priory Park on Monday, with the Falmouth boy leading his hometown club to the honour of being crowned champions of Cornwall for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century.

I don’t profess to know the inner workings of the dressing room, but I would imagine that it is a very tight-knit group of players that put themselves through the mental and physical limits for their team-mates and their manager. You simply cannot reach this unique level of success without it.

They often do it the hard way, but they always seem to do it.