I remeber now. Your right. Make the pipe larger helped with the foot effort not the actual movement.
Did you try moving the clutch lever on the box to see if you can engage the clutch by hand?
I had it as said above. Due to the clutch not being used, it got stuck. I manged to free it up by raising the rear wheels off the ground. Run the engine in a high gear and hit the brakes.
The only other way is remove the box.
Might be worth asking one of the other guys to measure the clutch arm movement on the box when the pedal is pressed. That way you can see if you have this amount of movement by hand.