The Cornish Matches
The Cornish Matches originally came about following a meeting between an Oxfordshire captain, Philip Haynes and a Cornish captain, Harold Truscott, as a result of which the first match took place at St Enodoc Golf Club in 1970. This was but the first of many long lasting and very special friendships that developed over the years between members of the two Counties societies.
The previously agreed penalty was that the losers should provide dinner at the Rock Hotel for their guests and, as always, the Cornish Captains proved to be most generous hosts!
Oxfordshire hosted the first visit by the Cornish captains in 1972, when matches were played at Tadmarton Heath, Huntercombe and Burford. In the early years, the Cornish captains stayed at the Shaven Crown Hotel at Shipton-under-Wychwood, and this first trip was the beginning of an unbroken run of annual tours that still continue today.
The Inaugural Cornwall Match was played at St Enodoc Golf Club on 24th May 1970
The result? A win for Oxfordshire by 3 matches to 1
The Oxfordshire team
Gordon Matthews
Jack Griffiths
George Gale
Reg Powell
Philip Haynes
John Stephens
John Chaundy
W. Bassingthwaite
The Cornwall team
Conway Morgan
Gerald Rowe
Harold Truscott
Ray Shirley
Philip Polkinhome
Hal Morton
Stanley Martin
John Brimson
Each year, three matches are played in Cornwall in May, followed by three matches in Oxfordshire in September. For a while, the visits to Cornwall were combined en route with a match against the Devon captains. Philip Haynes had donated the Wychwood Shield in 1973 for the series winners in Cornwall and Oxfordshire. This trophy tended most frequently to remain with the host team and, because the third match was so often a “dead” rubber, in 1997 Fred Davies presented the Truscott Trophy (in honour of Harold Truscott, one of the series’ founders) to be played for on the third day of each tour.