Pride and passion: Cornish Pirates could win Championship and not go up. Photo by ACTION IMAGES from the Daily Telegraph.
By Brendan Gallagher. Article from the Daily Telegraph, 16th May 2012.
Citizens of Kernow, rugby fans of Cornwall, it's time for Trelawny's Army to march again and lay siege to the Cornwall County Offices in Truro until the councillors therein come to their senses and agree to support calls for a 10,000 capacity county stadium, where the Pirates and Cornish rugby can start planning for the future.
Pride and passion: Cornish Pirates could win Championship and not go up. Photo by ACTION IMAGES from the Daily Telegraph.
It is already a long standing historic disgrace that Cornwall has not got such a facility, and if the Council miss the opportunity of voting through stadium plans you might as well pull the drawbridge up over the Tamar right now and become a rugby backwater for evermore.
The County Council voted 56-45 against the idea last night and the only hope now would be an about turn when the "cabinet" of the Council meet to either confirm or overthrow that decison.
I would suggest it's high time some old-fashioned, non-too-subtle lobbying takes places and, failing that, Trelawny's Army should man the barricades and march on the Council to make their views known.
Yes, times are hard, but times have always been hard in Cornwall, at least since the bottom dropped out of the tin market. But perversely that's the whole bloody point. Build a cracking little stadium, support the Cornish Pirates in their quest for Premiership rugby, and very good things indeed could happen.
I'm not suggesting that the Pirates themselves will ever make a fortune out of Premiership rugby, should they ever earn promotion, and how galling is it to think this year that they could win the Championship and be denied that right to step into the top flight? Unless you are Leicester, there is not a huge amount of money to be made out of professional rugby per se.