Truro City: From homeless club to league champions

The greatest moment in Cornwall’s history of football was Truro City’s promotion to the National League.

This county on the South West peninsula is known for its rugby union hotspots, but it’s more associated with vacations, cream teas, and pasties than high-flying football.

After claiming the title on goal difference from Torquay United with a dramatic 5-2 victory over St Albans City, the Tinners will become the first team from the county to play in the fifth tier of English football when they come next season.

Their victory comes a year after they were still playing “home” games at Gloucester City, which is a 390-mile round-trip, and it is the club’s highest of the year for a team that has also had its fair share of lows.

Truro’s long-serving captain Connor Riley-Lowe, remarked, “I can’t believe what we’ve accomplished.”

“Over the past few years, the club has gone through some really difficult times, most recently when they played three times a week in Gloucester.

People don’t realize how much effort we put in to get things right, “we’ve got jobs, we’ve got kids,” they say.

Perhaps Truro won the FA Vase in 2007 to win the league title, which is most comparable to Saturday’s triumph.

Stewart Yetton, the club’s current assistant manager, won at Wembley 18 years ago, but he now claims it is much more impressive. He is the club’s all-time best goalscorer.

He claimed that Whaley was “unbelievable” and that the memories we created that day were “awesome.”

We have won a league that we had no right to win, which is very different from winning it.

We had bigger budgets and should have done it when we entered the leagues for a few years. We recently won a competition where our budget is likely to be bottom-six and bottom-seven.

Few clubs can vouch for Truro City’s 20-year rollercoaster history.

They won five promotions in six years under the leadership of former owner Kevin Heaney, and they won the FA Vase at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium in 2007 with a 3-1 win over AFC Totton.

They climbed the ranks until they reached what is now the National League South in 2011 under the leadership of Heaney.

However, Truro went into administration in August 2012 as property developer Heaney’s business suffered in the time’s severe global economic crisis.

Before local businessmen Peter Masters and Philip Perryman intervened in their place to save the club in October of that year, they were hours away from being expelled from the league.

Work on Treyew Road started in October 2020 after a few planning delays, leaving the club homeless. They groundshared with Plymouth Parkway, Torquay, and even briefly with Gloucester City.

After having trouble with the Stadium for Cornwall’s funding, Truro decided to build their own ground, which opened last August and was purchased by Canadian investors.

However, Truro have flourished since moving back to Cornwall, where they have had over 3, 000 sell-outs for their final two matches of the season and the third-highest attendance in the league.

Owner Eric Perez told BBC Sport, “I’ve had the feeling all year that we could do something like this, and to actually do it is the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of people,” the owner said.

“We’ve done everything we can to expand and improve this club, reach its full potential, and reach Cornwall’s sporting potential,” we’ve said.

It will be even longer for Truro fans and those of their opponents next season.

The 920-mile round trip from Gateshead to Truro would be the longest away trip in English football, comfortably defeating Argyle’s 815-or-less miles this season if they failed to make it to the National League play-offs.

Truro’s “local” derby will be a 280-mile round-trip to Yeovil Town in the coming season, but many of the absence days will be more than double that.

Although none of the journeys are as lengthy as Whitley Bay’s round-trip to Truro in the FA Vase in 2008, which spanned more than 940 miles, are possible, Hartlepool United, York City, Boston United, and Carlisle United.

I’ll probably need to renew my passport and apply for a visa, joked John Askey, the manager.

It would probably be the longest trips ever made in English football.

It’s a nice issue to have, but I don’t know how to navigate it. However, we’ll have to figure it out.

What was regarded as one of the most unexpected non-league managerial appointments of the summer is more than justified, in the opinion of Askey.

The fifth and sixth tiers have enjoyed great success under the former manager of Port Vale and Shrewsbury Town. He helped York City advance from National League North to the 2018 title and Macclesfield Town to the 2018 title.

But he had never managed a club with a southerly base like Shrewsbury and never had any experience leading a team in the National League South, let alone one that had just moved to a new stadium, and had no idea how many people would show up to watch them.

What is the key to his success, then?

He said, “I think having trustworthy players is important.”

Truro has probably the most honest team of players I’ve ever had, in terms of travel and training facilities. They are incredible.

To have accomplished what they’ve accomplished is probably why it gives me just as much pleasure as any promotion I’ve ever received.