OKEHAMPTON Argyle are to continue in the Peninsula League after the club held an emergency committee meeting to decide the club’s future.

This has been a difficult season for Argyle in that many of the regular first team squad have gone on to university and the club has been left with a very small number of players to draw on.

Manager Jamie Ware has worked incredibly hard to try to put a competitive team on the pitch every week but twice the club has had to forfeit fixtures and take the penalties imposed by the league.

The club expressed thanks to Jamie for his tremendous efforts this season in trying to regularly raise a side, particularly in bringing in players from the local village sides and even from Bournemouth in order to keep Argyle going, and for the hours he has spent on the phone trying to get players to turn out for the club as well as regularly running the line when no-one else was available.

One option was to withdraw from the league but at the meeting, veteran player Roger Bonaparte offered to take the team forward as player-manager. The committee accepted this offer and Roger faces the unenviable task of trying to ward off relegation with ten games remaining and then build again for next season.

Roger is a well-known name in local football and has played in the Southern, Western, South West Peninsula, South Western and Devon leagues. He is currently manager of the Devon FA Women’s Representative side.

As a player, he has won the South West Peninsula Premier division title and League Cup with Buckland Athletic and won the Devon Premier Cup three times. He has also been player-manager at Bovey Tracey FC in the Peninsula Premier and manager of Exeter City Ladies FC.

Argyle had no match last Saturday but return to action with two games over the Easter weekend: Saturday, March 26, Axminster Town, home at 3pm; Monday, March 28, Totnes and Dartington away at 2pm.