Truro in big trouble

Ambitious Truro City are the leading club in Cornwall and they are in even bigger financial trouble than was realised earlier.   Their players have not been paid for a month and they owe £100,000 to Revenue and Customs (HMRC).   They have been given until 16 January by the High Court to settle their bill or face closure.

Ambitious Truro City are the leading club in Cornwall and they are in even bigger financial trouble than was realised earlier.   Their players have not been paid for a month and they owe £100,000 to Revenue and Customs (HMRC).   They have been given until 16 January by the High Court to settle their bill or face closure.


The rise of the White Tigers through the non-league pyramid, with five promotions in the past six seasons, has been bankrolled by property developer Kevin Heaney.   However, Heaney has faced financial challenges with his companies and was involved in a long drawn out but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to take Plymouth Argyle out of administration.


Heaney remains condfident that the club will survive.   He told the Non-League Paper, ‘HMRC know the situation we are in.   I’m sure it’ll be resolved this month.   The lawyers are working on it at the moment.’    However, what is required to settle the matter is a cash payment.    In a time of fiscal stringency, HMRC have become understandably fed up with football clubs using their tax payments as a credit card.    It should be remembered that if clubs don’t pay tax then either you or I have to pay more tax or there have to be more reductions in public services.


Heaney claims that the club has no future until the local council approve plans for a new stadium.  He stated, ‘Without this stadium this club is finished.   It cannot go forward.   The trouble we’ve had is that we have kind of outgrown the set up.’


However, it is difficult to see how Cornwall Council can be blamed for the club’s financial plight.   Even with grants, a new stadium is going to cost money and it is far from clear that it will produce a sufficient revenue stream.


There is a broader issue here about Cornish football which we shall be exploring in greater depth in next Saturday’s Radio Scilly sports show (broadcast at 10.00 GMT).   On the face of it, with its growing population, Cornwall (Kernow) should be able to support at least a Conference level club.   There is an argument for such a club being relatively centrally located in the cathedral city of Truro.


However, not is all it seems on the surface.   First, Cornwall, particularly in the west, is very much a rugby county.    Second, although the population has been growing, there is no one really big centre of population whereas Devon has Exeter, Plymouth and Torbay, each of which supports a Football League club.


Third, there is quite a contrast in the make up of the population between Cornish people, many of whom are relatively poor in a county where much of the work is seasonal and lowly paid, and relatively weathly retirees or second home owners.   I would think that the sort of people who live in St. Mawes would regard football as beneath them (this is not generally expatriate wealth) while even the less well off retirees often support teams ‘up country’.


Fourth, you have to take into account the geographical remoteness of Cornwall.   The road system is better than it was, but there is still much to be done and some of that has been held up by public expenditure cuts.   Once trains get beyond Plymouth they are relatively slow on a winding and hilly line with many stops.


This geographical remoteness does have consequences.   In the 1970s, Falmouth Town (from one of the larger population centres in the county) won successive titles in what was then the Rothmans Western League.    They got decent crowds for that level of the non-league, but ultimately they found the cost of travelling up country too great and retreated to the South-Western League and relative obscurity.


So perhaps the story of Truro City is a not unfamiliar one in contemporary football: vaulting ambition over reaching itself.