Truro City have made it to the fifth tier of English football, but their reward is the longest trip in the history of the beautiful game. The Cornish side are used to spending entire days on their team bus, but breaking the record for the longest distance traveled for a game twice in one season is quite the feat. Even more impressive are the supporters who are more than happy to do it with them, and John Joyce is one of them.
Just the eight hours
Diehard fan Joyce completed the first leg of the record 914-mile round trip on Friday, making his way up to the North East via a combination of train, bus, plane, and even metro. Joyce didn't allow himself much time to recover from the eight-hour haul, as he joined the Weekend Sports Breakfast bright and early on Saturday from his lodgings in Gateshead. Sharing the finer details of his journey, Joyce said: "We got the 13:44 train yesterday afternoon, and that was a bit of carnage. There were cancellations here there and everywhere – so we were changing where we didn't plan to change up to Bristol Airport. And then it was the airport shuttle, so there's the bus covered. Then the flight was 19:55 last night getting in at 21:00 at Newcastle, [followed by] the metro into Gateshead – our digs – which I'm at now. So it was a 13:45 train, and we got into our digs at 9:45 last night."
Such is Joyce's commitment to his beloved club, that his journey up North actually took him longer than his drive from Brussels to Cornwall in his previous career working for NATO. The loyal supporter revealed: "I've done a lot of travelling – I did 30 years in the Royal Navy. For perspective, I worked for NATO in the last six years of my career in the navy, and it was a shorter drive from Brussels back to Cornwall, than it is from Cornwall to Gateshead!" But the distance certainly doesn't bother Joyce, who pointed out that Truro's closest away game is Yeovil Town – a five-hour round trip. It isn't just time that the huge effort has cost Joyce, who totalled up just how much he has shelled out to follow the Tinners. Breaking down his expenses, he said: "It was £108 for the flight – I'm a Guinness man, it was about £7 [for a pint at Bristol Airport]! It was £33 for a single for the train."
Joyce: "So £33 – plus £200 and a bit lost in a day's wages yesterday. We're on about £400 [now]. Match tickets – that was £17, and I've not even bought a pint or a burger yet!"
Touching gesture
Fortunately for Joyce, one thing he won't have to worry about at Gateshead this afternoon is food and drink. That's if he makes it to the ground early enough, with the hosts revealing ahead of kick off that the first 90 Truro fans to arrive will share the spoils of a generous £920 behind the bar. The classy gesture comes courtesy of EFL sponsors Sky Bet, with the substantial sum representing £1 for every mile travelled. Gateshead also shared that the bookmakers had offered to reciprocate this when their supporters make the reverse trip in February.
Mammoth mission
The 914-mile round trip will very likely never be beaten, and if it is in the very distant future it will almost certainly involve Truro. Tucked away in the south west peninsula, almost any journey up north is a task, so much so that they've already broken the longest trip record once this season. Their match against Carlisle on September 6, a 3-0 defeat, set the watermark at 878miles, but everyone was saving up their ink for the real show versus Gateshead almost two months later. The previous record of 823miles set during a Championship clash between Newcastle and Plymouth stood for 16 years, but like their Devon neighbours, Truro are showing that being round the corner in the south west is no longer the barrier it once was. In fact, chairman Eric Perez now sees it as a positive.
"I'm really looking forward to breaking the record with them – a record that will never be broken, I don't think," he said. "Well, it'll be broken when we play in Newcastle in the league – that's when it'll be broken and that'll be some years when we've achieved some promotions. I'm not going to say it's a short journey. It's a ridiculously long journey in context. But what that does is galvanise our side even further – everybody spends time together, we're used to travelling together."
Captain Conner Riley-Lowe is similarly buzzing about the future, telling the BBC: "It's exciting really. I've been at Truro for 10 years now and we're very, very used to travelling. I know you read the stats, but for us it's just more time on the bus – this time it's just a little bit extra longer."
How are Truro getting to Gateshead?
Many teams coming down to the 3,600 Truro City Stadium do so by plane, but the Cornish are more than happy to take their bus. This time it will be 10-12 hours on English roads, but with a break in Derby where they've been allowed to train at the Championship side's facilities. There's also the added bonus that with increased finances the club have now become professional, meaning their players don't have to work second jobs around their travels. That's all well and good, but for the supporters they'll have to sort themselves out. Truro couldn't be more grateful though, with manager John Askey summing up the gratitude. "I've said it before and this is the thing that makes Truro special as a club is that the supporters get behind the team no matter what," he said after the last mammoth trip to Carlisle. "I know last season we were very successful, so it was easy to get behind the players, but from what I know the fans never even moan and they appreciate what the players have done."
