The longest away day ever in English league football – a 914-mile round trip

Truro City are limbering up for another record-breaking away-day odyssey as they prepare to face Gateshead in the National League on Saturday.

The Cornish side’s 914-mile trek to the International Stadium and back just pips their previous record of 878, set by their visit to Carlisle in September, as the longest journey ever for an English football league match.

Truro, who were promoted to the fifth tier for the first time in their history last year, set off at seven o’clock on Friday morning and will stay overnight in Darlington, via a brief stop for a light training session courtesy of Derby.

Such epics have become second nature for Truro since their ascent to national level, and they do not always go to plan. Last month’s relatively piffling 736-mile round trip to Scunthorpe was plagued by transport problems that saw their mid-trip leg-stretch axed, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they lost 4-0.

But Truro’s football consultant Alex Black says the physical and financial burden is offset by the camaraderie engendered by spending so much time together on the road.

“Even when we were playing at a level two divisions lower we had a significant travel budget, and the majority of our games have always been overnight stays because you just can’t drive for four or five hours in a morning and be in condition to play a match at that level,” Black told the PA news agency.

“Given the state of the British motorways, if the app says it’s four or five hours, there’s no guarantee. But the board have ambitions for the club, and they know this is part and parcel of what we do. We don’t stay at the Ritz, but we stay in nice places.”

Half of Truro’s current squad hail from the broader south-west region but only two are from Cornwall, including right-back Billy Palfrey, from Looe, who gave up a job making fishing nets to commit to Truro’s first fully professional squad at the start of the current campaign.

The remainder hail from far and wide, which Black admits can be a harder sell given the club’s geographical location and the commitment required to embark on a season which will see ever-present players rack up over 14,000 miles on the road for league fixtures alone.

“If you’re a team at our level with geographically less permanently-based players and one of the lowest budgets, it’s going to make it harder, so you have to work at it,” added Black. “But generally when you recruit, it means you are going to get lads who are desperate to play football at the best level they can.”

While Truro’s trip to Gateshead might set a new record for a league fixture, it is not the club’s longest. In 2008, they undertook a round trip 14 miles longer to take on Whitley Bay in the last 16 of the FA Vase.

And the prize for the longest trip in FA competitions still stands with Falmouth Town, who travelled 956 miles to play Bedlington Terriers in the 2000 FA Vase.

Thankfully for Truro, the fixture computer has afforded them some overdue mercy by giving them plenty of time to recover from their record-breaking trip. Their next match is not until Bonfire Night, when they face a trifling 514-mile hop to Solihull Moors.

“We are planning to stay up on this occasion which we haven’t done before,” added Black. “We might have a night out – the lads will be off the next couple of days – but it won’t be too big a night, because it’s an early start on Sunday heading all the way back to Cornwall.”