TORPOINT Athletic had more reason than most to feel aggrieved when the 2019-20 season was brought to an abrupt halt due to the coronavirus.

They were sitting in third place in the South West Peninsula League Premier East table, seven points adrift of leaders Brixham but with two games in hand.

And they were also looking forward to an Easter Monday Cornwall Senior Cup final against either near-neighbours Millbrook or Saltash United – the first time Point had reached the final of the prestige competition in 24 years.

On that occasion, Point were managed by Phil Cardew and they went on to beat Porthleven 2-0 in the showpiece game to claim the silverware. This time around it is his nephew Dean who is bringing success to The Mill-based club.

‘It is a rather special competition to be involved in, and even though everyone was talking about coronavirus at the time, when we won the semi-final against Wadebridge (on March 3), I didn’t think for one second we might not play it,’ said Dean.

‘It is really gutting, but what can you do?

‘There is a more important, bigger picture going on though, and what is happening at the moment puts football into perspective.’

When Cardew looks back over the season, in which Lewis Young was top scorer with 25 goals, he has every reason to feel very pleased.

‘It was a good one as a whole and we did well, and we were confident as well with the run-in that we had in the league. I know we had a lot of games to play in a short space of time, but we felt that we were equipped for it, so it is disappointing.’

The obvious highlight was the Senior Cup semi-final win over Wadebridge at Liskeard’s Lux Park.

‘That was the massive one for us,’ said Cardew.

‘As the season is going on, you just take each game as it comes, but when you look back, we went to Ilfracombe and won 2-1 in the FA Vase at the end of August, and at the time I thought “this is a good win”, but as the season went on, they were top of the league and you realised what a great result that had been.’

The 3-2 Boxing Day win at Millbrook brought plenty of joy and satisfaction to the club, but the other stunning away-day success came at Mousehole in the quarter-finals of the Senior Cup, when a wonder goal from Curtis Damerell gave them a 1-0 win.

Cardew missed that game in early February with a very nasty flu-type illness, and he admitted: ‘It has left me wondering whether I had coronavirus, I was that ill.

‘That was a great result, and not being there was obviously disappointing, but I sort of managed it from the sidelines on the phone to Willow (his assistant manager Gary Williams) and getting updates, and it was a strange one for me.

‘But also beating Bodmin 1-0 at home in an earlier round, that was also a huge result for us.’

Cardew admitted that the league was ‘full of ups and downs’ and Point had an annoying knack of slipping up every time they had a chance to go top of the division.

‘Tell me about it!’ he exclaimed. ‘But that was the beauty of that league to be honest. No game was a certainty. Top of the league could be playing bottom and they could quite easily drop points.’

It was a new experience for Torpoint as themselves and Millbrook were the only two Cornish teams in an otherwise all-Devon league, but one that Cardew quite enjoyed.

‘It was different, and when we first got put in it, I was excited for a new challenge.

‘A lot of people were saying the standard wasn’t as good as the West, but if I am honest, the standard was a lot better than what a lot of people were thinking. We were going to new places, and playing against players you didn’t know about, and sometimes we would be given the team sheet by the opposition and take a look at it and not recognise one name on it, whereas in previous years, you would know all of them, so we certainly learnt some new things and new ways, but I enjoyed playing in the league.’

As to the standard, Torpoint reached the Senior Cup final and beat Bodmin and Mousehole along the way, while Millbrook were in the semi-final, and Cardew added: ‘Millbrook also beat Saltash in the League Cup, and Bovey Tracey beat St Austell, and if you look at the cup games against West sides, the East certainly held their own.’

Torpoint are now keen to keep their squad together and pick up where they left off whenever football resumes, and even though the league is now ‘null and void’, there is also still a chance they will be allowed their ‘day in the sun’, with the Cornwall FA yet to make a decision over what to do with the outstanding Senior Cup ties.

‘Nobody has told us that is cancelled yet, so in the back of our minds, we are wondering if that might still be played if we are back doing stuff in July,’ he admitted.

‘As a team, we have a WhatsApp group and we are doing our own training sessions and making sure we all know what we are doing from a fitness side of things, because we just don’t know when we are going to be allowed to start again, so we have got to make sure we are ready when we do.

‘The Peninsula League are still planning to play the remaining League Cup matches, which is why we are holding on to a glimmer of hope over the Senior Cup.

‘I have spoken to the boys and I have told them I want them to stay together. It was a good season, we learned a bit about it league and I assume we will be in the same division, and for me, and everyone probably feels the same, because it came to such an abrupt end, it is almost like unfinished business, and you want to stay together so we can go and do it again.

‘As far as I know, everybody has bought into staying.

‘We have had a few players spoken to by other clubs, but at the moment they have all said they are staying.’