ST BLAZEY AFC

My ground hunters and I, visited last night, St Blazey AFC, a club based in St Blazey, Cornwall, playing in the South West Peninsular League, Premier Division West and things didn't go well for the visitors. (3-1 to home team). They were playing Newquay FC (The Peppermints). 

Formed in 1896 as a Junior side, the club attained Senior status in 1910. St Blazey was a founding member of the South Western League in 1951, in which they competed until 2007 when the league merged with others to form the South West Peninsula League. One of the highlights of this week in the South-west was to visit their home, Blaise Park, for a local derby against Newquay AFC.

The club is recognised as one of the most successful in the county, having won multiple league championships and cup competitions, with their most recent league success coming in the final season of the South Western League in 2007. St Blazey have entered England's FA Cup competition, in all but one year since 1950. They also play in the FA Vase on a regular basis, having first competed in 1985. The club's traditional colours are green and black. The club's stadium is Blaise Park, which has a capacity of 3,500.

St Blazey won the Eastern Divisional Cup, Junior Cup, and Bodmin & District League Cup in 1909 and 1910 before it attained Senior status later that year. The club was successful in many county cups and became a member of the South Western League in 1951. They won this league thirteen times, including the 2001-2 season, when they suffered no league defeats en route to winning the trophy. The club achieved thirty-three victories, and three draws from thirty-six league matches that season, earning 102 points.

They were admitted to the FA Cup in 1950 and had a best season in the competition in 1998 when they reached the Fourth Qualifying Round against Camberley Town, falling agonisingly short of the First Round proper. The club competed in the FA Trophy for the first time in 1969.

St Blazey entered the FA Vase for the first time in 1984, a competition which they continue to compete in regularly alongside the FA Cup. St Blazey soon gained direct entry into the South Western Peninsular League, Premier Division.

The club play their home games at Blaise Park, a 3,500 capacity stadium which opened in 1906. The ground was built on reclaimed land from the nearby estuary in the town. It was well used during the First World War, as the pitch was dug up and the underlying sand was used to fill sandbags. The club moved back in after the war and constructed a wooden grandstand with bench seating in 1931, painted in the club's colours, green and black. A crowd of more than 6,500 were in attendance for a Cornwall Senior Cup match against St Austell in 1949. In common with many non-league grounds, there is a sizeable, and well mown grass bank which runs the length of the opposite touchline, with the River Par and Atlantic Coast Railway directly behind it.

Blaise Park was the first sports' ground in Cornwall to install floodlights, paid for through a scheme of £1 shares and erected by voluntary labour in the late 1950s, switched on by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957, when Cornwall FA and the Combined Services played in a charity match. The club built a special "royal box" for the occasion but later pulled it down. The lights were replaced in November 1989 and first used in a friendly match against Plymouth Argyle. 

The club held a notable record following their unbeaten South Western League season in 2002, when they went 75 matches unbeaten in league competition, which was a record for English Football at senior level, until it was bettered two years later by AFC Wimbledon, competing in the Isthmian League at the time.

(The Cornish Times however, tells me that the first use of floodlights in Cornwall was in Bodmin in a celebration match between a County XI and Blackpool FC, who at the time, in the early 1950s, were successful in FA Cups (Winners in 1953) and of course had Stanley Matthews in their squad. Tomorrow Newquay AFC.