the major companies for a 10 pence each- way Lucky 15 but they can with us, and if you’ve got a good base of that, it can be profitable.” St Blazey is predominately a residential
St Blazey AFC
area. Industrially, English China Clays, who produced kaolin for paper making and ceramics, were the largest employers in Cornwall at their zenith in the 1950s & 60s. Imerys, a French company, took them over in 1999 and, while the china clay industry is still operating, its workforce is now only half of that in its heyday. With the nearest opposition being a
William Hill shop in St Austell, five miles away, there is a certain amount of passing trade with holiday makers. Par sands, just a mile down the road, is a popular holiday destination, and is set to become even more popular as a marina is being built there, along with a rail link to The Eden Project.
reclaimed kaolinite pit, is a burgeoning visitor attraction and includes the world’s largest greenhouse containing plants collected from all around the world. It is located little over a mile away from St Blazey.
on the World Cup, Cornish Racing Services have offered enhanced prices and ran their own promotional competitions. For any game that finished a goalless draw they returned stakes on first player to score and correct scores.
In an effort to generate more turnover The Eden Project, constructed in a
Cornish Racing Services decked out for the World Cup
Picture: Mary Pitt
because there were two Irish meetings that we’d got pictures from, and you don’t want to discard something else on mainstream. Presumably the more racing you’ve got, the more profit you make, but is a race from Musselburgh necessarily any better than a race from Naas? “If you want to provide a good service,
The extent to which football betting is taking over is evidenced by the fact that summer Saturdays are relatively quiet in the absence of any soccer. Ian comments that even Derby Saturday was no busier than a normal Saturday during the football season, emphasising, perhaps, that the once great race is no longer the national event that it used to be. Ian was somewhat irked with those behind this year’s Derby day coverage. “You had a situation where on Derby day there were seven meetings running at the same time on SIS. On the day when you should really be trying to build up this one race, we had customers who were confused and didn’t know what was going on.
“I can understand why it was happening
A matter of yards away from the Cornish Racing Services shop in Station Street is the ground of St Blazey AFC, one of Cornwall’s most successful non-league football clubs. Formed in 1896, St Blazey were founder members of the South West Football League in 1951. They now play in the Premier Division of the Carlsburg South West Peninsula (CSWP) League, which was formed in 2007 from the merger of the Devon County League and the South Western League. Prior to that, St Blazey had won
the South Western League six times in seven consecutive seasons between 1998-99 and 2004-05, only losing out to Falmouth Town on goal difference in 1999-00. They won the league again in 2006-07, the final year before its amalgamation into the CSWP and their thirteenth league title in all. St Blazey’s ground, Blaise Park,
do you need to supply all those seven meetings? Even the people giving out the data couldn’t cope with it. Where’s the common sense when you’ve got the Derby, which should be the centrepiece of the whole day, where you should be trying to build it up and not just bury it among other races. “Who is driving SIS to create that amount of racing? Who is driving them to say, for example, as soon as the Grand National has finished we’ll have a race from Steeple Downs? Who makes that decision?” They are fair questions. And while the Grand National, Cheltenham and Royal Ascot have all usurped the Derby in terms of betting interest, maybe a touch more thought could be given to promote the race as being something more significant than just the four o’clock at Epsom.n
was built on reclaimed land from the nearby estuary. It has a capacity of 3,500 and boasts what are considered to be the best floodlights in Cornwall. Their first team colours are green and black stripes. St Blazey are one of only two
Cornish teams to have played in the FA Cup, Trophy and Vase, and were the first Cornish club to transfer a professional player to a Football League club when Bob Swiggs joined Plymouth Argyle for £600 in 1955. More recently, England
international goalkeeper Nigel Martyn began by playing amateur football for St Blazey, along with other Cornish sides Heavy Transport FC and Bugle while working in a plastics factory and for a coal merchant, before starting his professional career with Bristol Rovers in 1987 after apparently having been “spotted” by Rovers’ tea lady while she was on holiday. Martin subsequently played for
Crystal Palace where he became the first £1 million goalkeeper in British football. He then spent six seasons with Leeds and three with Everton, winning 23 England caps before an ankle injury forced his retirement in 2006.
Blaise Park, home of St Blazey FC visit
www.bosmag.co.uk Picture: Mary Pitt BOS Magazine July/August 2010 11
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