The Cornwall Charity Cup made its return this week with the quarter-finals all due to have been played.

Falmouth Town and Helston Athletic are making their first appearances in the competition for some time, and while it is nice to see them in the competition, it was a shame to see Wendron United omitted from this year’s tournament to make way for them.

Until this year, the midweek competition, which is run by the Cornwall FA, was contested by the Cornish clubs in the old SWPL Division 1 West, with the remaining handful of places being filled by Combination League or East Cornwall Premier League clubs to reach a round 16 teams.

But the summer restructure of Cornish football saw the Division 1 West cease to exist, forcing a rethink, with the tournament now being made up clubs from the expanded SWPL Premier instead.

That is fine, except there are 22 Cornish teams in the SWPL Premier. So how do you get 22 into 16 places?

You can’t, which means six teams were excluded somewhat arbitrarily from the competition, with Wendron one of those six.

Wadebridge, Dobwalls and St Blazey also failed to get an invite, as did Torpoint Athletic and Millbrook, who are the only Cornish SWPL clubs in the Premier East.

It all seemed rather unfair to me, as this means those six clubs now miss out on an extra chance to win another cup competition purely by luck of the draw.

It also denies them the extra income from having at least one more game, with gate receipts being shared by both sides in the tournament.

Wendron’s defeat in the Cornwall Senior Cup last week means their cup hopes are over for another year, having lost at Dobwalls in the League Cup earlier in the season.

Compare that to the likes of St Austell and Saltash United, who already had both of those cups, plus the FA Vase and FA Cup to play for. Their inclusion in the Charity Cup gives them five cups to play for, while the Dron, Dobwalls and Wadebridge only get two goes.

The snubbed sextet’s ire may well have been magnified when Liskeard Athletic forfeited their first round tie at Falmouth Town on the day of the game, with Godolphin Atlantic doing the same for their quarter-final at Saltash United on Wednesday.

While there may be perfectly valid reasons behind these forfeitures, it still denied at least one of the omitted teams the chance to play, and also denied the tournament’s nominated charity, which this year is the Merlin MS Centre, their ten per cent share of gate receipts from the two games.

Rather than forcing six sides to miss out each season, I’m not sure why the Cornwall FA did not just add an extra preliminary round to the tournament, with the six teams that missed out playing six others in an early round before whittling it down to 16.

At least that way everyone gets a fair chance.

It only means one more match at most, but it gives everyone the same opportunity to compete. It also means six more games to raise money for the tournament’s nominated charity each season.

Hopefully this change will be made next year.