A paucity of options in the Shire

Somerset's desperately close defeat to Hampshire in the Twenty20 final on Saturday was all the more demoralising as it may well have ended the sporting hopes for the county of Somerset for another year. This is because, as the headline says, there is a paucity of headline sport in this county, the successful cricket aside. Somerset CCC are enjoying one of their best seasons in recent memory, under the coaching of Andy Hurry and the captaincy of Marcus Trescothck. As well as the successful Twenty20 campaign, they are also odds-on to qualify for the semi-finals of the Pro40 one day league (having won all their eight matches so far) and are in contention for the first County Championship title in their history - they are on the verge of a win against Essex which would keep the Cidermen on the coat-tails of Notts and Yorkshire. The county has a rich history, and you only have to walk around the County Ground at Taunton to get a feel for the legends who have strutted their stuff out in the middle. There are th Joel Garner gates, stands dedicated to Sir Ian Botham, Sir Viv Richards and current captain Trescothick as well as the Andy Caddick pavilion. Just going around the ground there are poster tributes to the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and Colin Atkinson, and in recent years overseas superstars such as Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting and Justin Langer have all lent their support to Somerset's success.
But this shouldn't paper over the fact that for a county this size there is very little top quality sport for fans to enjoy, despite the county seemingly being sport obsessed. Cricket is clearly 'the' sport of Somerset. But the South West also prides itself on its aptitude and appetite towards rugby. However, none of the sprt at the highest level is played in Somerset. It would be very generous to count Bath as Somerset (Avon and North Somerset at best) and Exeter and Gloucester are even further afield, when it comes to the Aviva Premiership. And slightly further down the ladder, Bristol and Plymouth play in the RFU championship, but the best Somerset has to offer is Taunton Rugby Club, who play in National 2 South. This is just three promotions below the top flight to be fair to the side, and trips to likes of Canterbury, Southend and former top flight side Richmond in the coming season show the kind of level they are playing at. But it is still nothing to write home about, and the dilapidated little stadium in Bathpool, which is visible from the railway line such is it's size, also show the limitations of the club.
The football landscape is a little more rosy. Yeovil Town are the great success story of Somerset's football history. They have enjoyed a meteoric rise from non-league giant-killers to regular football league competitors and have established themselves as a genuine League One club in the last few seasons. The Glovers were famous for beating league clubs in the FA Cup (one of the most famous being the defeat of Sunderland in 1949), but in 2003, they finally reached the holy grail of League football under the stewardship of former Latvia coach Gary Johnson. But this wasn't the end of the fairytale. After narrowly missing out on the play-offs in their first football league season, the won the League Two title the following season to reach the third tier of English football. Johnson departed to Bristol City soon afterwards, but under Russell Slade (who replaced Johnson's successor Steve Thompson) he took the Huish Park club to the brink of the Championship. They lost the League One play-off final in 2007 to Blackpool, after beating giants Nottingham Forest in the semi-final. Having seen the direction Blackpool have headed in since that day at the Millennium Stadium, it is astounding how the fates of football can turn. Yeovil, on the other hand, have consolidated in League One, without ever looking like exiting the division at either end. For a club of their size, though, that is more than alright. They got a reminder of their success in tragic circumstances. Former striker Adam Stansfield, who missed the majority of their promotion season to the league with a broken leg before recovering to feature in their historic first campaign, sadly died last week after a short battle with bowel cancer,at the age of 31. A sudden and sad twist to the tale, his former manager Johnson spoke out about his own personal sadness at Stansfield's passing.
Taunton Town, on the other hand, are a mere four promotions away from the hallowed football league. They play in division one of the Southern League, so the premier division of the Southern League, Conference South and the Nationwide Conference stand in their way. They have some non-league pedigree (they won the FA Vase in 2001, which is effectively the third-highest version of the FA Cup, after the great competition itself and the FA Trophy, which is for Nationwide Conference and other higher non-league club's). But it would be a big ask for a town of the size of Taunton to have a league club, especially with a stadium capacity of 2,500 (of which only 300 are seated).
There is a Somerset-shaped chasm when in terms of top-level team sports. This may be in part due to the fact that despite Somerset being a big county, there are no citites in it. Taunton, the county town, has by the far the biggest population of around 100,000 people, but is still classed as a town. This is clearly a constraint, as all the sporting efforts of the county are geared towards the cricket team. Young players know there is more chance of getting noticed as a cricketer than in any other sport because of Somerset CCC, so that is what they concentrate on. The likes of Jos Buttler (the 19-year-old wicket-keeper batsman, who was a student at King's College in Taunton) and James Hildreth (the middle-order batsman who attended Millfield School, renowned for its sporting excellence) spring to mind, and act as a shining example for all promising cricketers. There are no such examples in other sports, and this is why the county keeps producing cricket players but nothing else. This situation is unlikely to change, but if the season ends likes it has started for Trescothick and his young team, few people are likely to care. There is always Jenson Button (Frome born and bred) but as a resident of noted tax haven Monte Carlo, it is doubtful how often he re-connects with his Somerset roots.