Truro’s rise from local football to the National League has taken 18 years.
But their position on the Cornish peninsula means they are hugely isolated from the rest of the professional game.
Their nearest full-time team are League One side Plymouth Argyle – almost 60 miles away – whilst their closest opponents this season will be Yeovil Town – 140 miles and about three hours drive away.
No side in the history of English football will have had to travel as far as the Tinners will this season. In total, they will travel around 13,560 miles in the league, with their longest round-trip 914 miles to Gateshead and back at the end of October.
The club has seven away round-trips in excess of 700 miles, and more than half of their away trips are longer than the journey between London and Paris.
“No matter what league we’ve been in we’ve always had to do a decent amount of travelling,” says Riley-Lowe.
“The club are very, very helpful in terms of like letting us stay overnight. We’ll travel on the Friday, stay in the hotel on a Friday night.
“But since I’ve been at Truro, we’ve always been very good at home and I think that is obviously due to the traveling.
“It might be a little bit different this year. In previous seasons a lot of teams have done it on the day, and then that’s where we’re talking about – maybe teams not being able to be their best.
“I think every team in this league will come down the night before, so that’s where it does level out a little bit.”
But Yetton feels that being full-time will negate a lot of the problems the club had last season when they travelled.
“They [the players] were working until five o’clock, getting on the coach at six, getting to most hotels between 10 and 12 o’clock,” he says.
“Now we’ve gone full-time, we’ll be leaving at 10 in the morning. All right, there might be a few longer journeys, but we’ll be getting there at a better time of the day.
“So I don’t really think it will make much difference, purely on the basis we’re not working 35, 37, 40-hour week jobs as well as football.”
