FALMOUTH TOWN 0-4 TRURO CITY
As is traditional in pre-seasons of late, Falmouth Town hosted their local rivals Truro City in this last friendly before their season starts in earnest on Saturday.
Falmouth have made minimal changes so far since their promotion in May with Kaiden Gordon-Dunn and James Swan leaving to pursue work opportunities and Jacob Grange moving to SWPL Newquay. In their place comes Harrison Jewell and Kai Cornish, both being recruited from fellow promoted club Helston Athletic. Missing for this game was Luke Barner, Kai Cornish, Rubin Wilson and Andy Elcock.
The game started in an unfortunate fashion for Falmouth with Truro scoring from their first attack after 30 seconds with a cross-come-shot from the left from Truro taking a wicked deflection which resulted in the ball clearing Morgan Coxhead and ending up in the net. Ryan law having the last Truro touch.
There followed a period of sustained pressure from Truro with Falmouth unable to gain any time on the ball, Truro looking in the main physically superior and their skill levels making obvious the difference of the two levels in the non-league pyramid. That being said, Truro did not create any clear-cut chances against a Falmouth side lining up with a three-man central defence of Annear, Ward and Jewell, which shouldn’t concede too many in the coming season.
Truro’s 2nd goal came at around the 20 minute mark. Jewell looked to have conceded a free-kick on the edge of his box and Falmouth seemed to stop playing, however the ref played an advantage and the ball was played through into the right side of the penalty area and was duly dispatched to make it 2-0. That ended the best part of the game for Falmouth with the pace and trickery of Oscar Massey stretching the visiting defence, although in truth they never really looked uncomfortable. The half ended at 3-0 after a goal in the 43rd minute. During a rare Falmouth attack, the ball broke to a Truro midfielder who played an incisive past inside of Leivers down the right to Yassine-En-Neyah. His cross was intercepted by Jewell but he could only deflect the ball past Coxhead for the 2nd own-goal of the evening.
The 2nd half was fairly uneventful with both teams making numerous changes. Falmouth notably handing a debut to another local talent in the shape of Ned Symons, son of ex-Town goalkeeper Chris Symons. Truro added to their lead through Tyler Harvey and the game finished at 4-0 which meant that Truro retained the impressive Aubrey Wilkes Trophy for another season. A good run-out for both teams and Falmouth probably won’t face a side of Truro’s quality again this season, bar a run deep into the FA Trophy or FA Cup, given they d o not now qualify for the FA Vase.
Town now look to the weekend and an FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round tie against Western League Torpoint Athletic. After a testing series of pre-season friendlies, they will be hoping for their first win for the season which would set up an interesting potential away tie in the next round at the winners of the game between Helston Athletic and Barnstaple Town.
Line Ups:
Truro City: Dan Lavercombe, Triallist, Ryan Law, Will Dean, Tom Harrison, Sam Sanders, Yassine-En-Neyah, Tyler Love-Holmes, Seidou Sanogo, Rocky Neal, Triallist. Subs: Tyler Harvey, Dan Rooney, Billy Palfrey, Triallist, Triallist, Morgan Jones.