⚽️ ‘I couldn't be more excited’ — Truro City FC’s new owner outlines his vision for the club
Following today’s announcement that a Canadian consortium has purchased Truro City Football Club, we spoke to Eric Perez, who leads the group which also owns Cornwall RLFC.
By Colin Bradbury
Following today’s announcement that a Canadian consortium has purchased Truro City Football Club, we spoke to Eric Perez, who leads the group which also owns Cornwall RLFC.
Starting with the mechanics of the deal, Perez confirmed that the consortium has seven members, all from Canada, and that he initiated the deal: “I sold the opportunity to the others because it’s such a fantastic one. And because I’m the one who comes down to Cornwall, I was best placed to evaluate it. I honestly couldn’t be more excited about this.”
Perez’s involvement with Cornwall started with the establishment of Cornwall RLFC, which has now completed two seasons in the third tier of English rugby league. Truro City will sit alongside the Choughs, with the consortium owning both entities.
Perez has had a life-long interest in the beautiful game in England, describing himself as a bit of a ‘football anorak’. He grew up watching First Division / Premier League football on TV in Canada, but says: “My tastes changed, and I fell in love with football from League One down to the National League and non-league generally. To me that’s the heart and soul of football now.”
On the decision to become even more committed to the Cornish sports scene, Perez says: “We’ve been operating in Cornwall for a couple of years now and I don’t mind saying I’ve fallen in love with the Duchy. This opportunity came about, and I really believe in the potential of the football club.”
But he is also attracted to a particular feature that some might see as a handicap, namely Cornwall’s unique geographic position. For Perez, it’s an opportunity: “Cornwall has incredible territorial exclusivity. There’s an hour and a half buffer to the next (high-level) club, and you don’t find that anywhere else in England.
“Cornwall has a strong identity and a robust football pyramid with Truro City at the top. It seemed like an opportunity that was too good to pass up, and I feel we can really do something special here.”
As for the new owners’ ambitions for Truro City, Perez simply says that: “We aspire to make this club as good as it can be and for it to play at as high a level as possible. But there’s no immediate pressure to get promoted. We’re going to do it in a sustainable way, but we have ambition.
“How incredible would it be to have a Cornish club in the Football League? There’s no timeframe on that. You can plough all the money in the world into it, like Wrexham did, and they didn’t go up at their first shot. It’s better to do things in a sustainable way.”
He is also clear that the funding is in place to match the club’s ambitions: “How it gets allocated will be discussed with Alex Black and Paul Wotton.”
Perez has a clear vision of the foundations on which Truro City will be built in the future, namely “youth and community”. Developing home-grown players is seen as essential.
A “robust youth setup” is a priority, one that will be supported appropriately from a funding perspective. He says: “A lot of people are solely first team focused, which is important as that’s your ‘front of house’. But if you don’t have your inventory in the back and you haven’t built the foundations, you end up with nothing.
“The costs of running the first team can be exponentially more to achieve the same result than if you properly build from the youth all the way up. I believe there is a lot of talent in Cornwall, and that talent could also become an asset for us. But it won’t be if we don’t invest in it. So it’s important to say that there will be budget for that.”
Perez wants to create an environment where there are opportunities for talented footballers to have a career close to home: “We want Cornish athletes to realise that they don’t need to leave Cornwall to play professional football, that they can have a solid career right here at Truro City. I want kids to aspire to play for us all the way up to the first team level.”
Ultimately he wants to see: “More high-level players coming out of Cornwall as a result of the work we’re doing at Truro City.”
As a first step, the club would like to re-establish the relationship with the Truro City Youth Football Club. He says: “One of our goals is to bring that back under the umbrella of Truro City.”
Turning to the current first team squad, it’s well known that the majority live in Devon right now. However, he is not worried about a potential player exodus when Truro City moves back to Cornwall. He says: “I met with the players at training last night [Tuesday]. I let them know that we’d be back in Truro next year and the only reaction I got was enthusiasm.
“We might have to help with accommodation for some of the players, but at the end of the day it’s Truro City, not Devon County so it is what it is. If you’re not willing to commute to Truro it probably doesn’t make sense to play for Truro City.”
As far as other club personnel are concerned, Perez — who will become executive chairman — recognises that there is a need to boost resources: “Truro City is a bit thin administratively now. We will be adding some people and looking to increase the level of professionalism. To give it some TLC basically.
“Alex Black will continue to oversee the football side, Paul Wotton as manager and other people like John Fabby who run the youth setup. But we will be making some more hires.”
As for the football ground at Threemilestone, Perez confirmed that the facility will be owned by Cornwall Council. Conversations are ongoing between them and the football club, but Truro City is “hoping for a long lease”.
He is very confident that it will be ready in time for the start of the 2024 season: “The ground will be ready for us to play there next season but there will be temporary infrastructure. It won’t be in its final form — it will take a couple of years to build it up. But there’s no doubt that it will be ready for ground grading in March next year.”
There has been much talk about the ground being shared with the rugby league side and Perez agrees that there would be some merit in this: “The good thing about rugby league is that it’s an opposite season. It’s a good way to keep the ground ticking over in the football off-season to have rugby league played there.”
But he is absolutely adamant that the main focus is the football club: “Number one is that this is a facility for football. What falls into place after that, falls into place. But the primary entity at the new ground is Truro City Football Club.”
As far as the Truro City support base is concerned, it is, of course, good news that the team is coming home to Cornwall. But as well as re-engaging with existing fans, Perez is keen to tap into the vast majority of the population that doesn’t currently watch live football: “I want to attract the fans that aren’t going to football at all right now. We need to provide a great day out, good sport at a good level.
“One of our big goals is to make Truro City cool. If it’s cool, kids will be into it. That’s the culture I come from. People want to watch, enjoy and be part of things that are cool and interesting.”
The aim then is not to ‘steal’ fans from other Cornish clubs but to engage a wider section of the community in football. He says: “What we want is for everybody to rally behind this club. We are fully willing to support any other club in Cornwall in any way that we can to ensure that our football pyramid is strong.
“We don’t look at the other local football clubs as competition. We want a rising tide to raise all boats, we aim to lead a football renaissance in Cornwall. I want success for all of Cornish football.”
Turning to more immediate matters, given Truro City’s current position in the National League South table, is he concerned that the club’s return to Cornwall might come on the heels of relegation? He says: “We have the utmost confidence in Paul and the players. What I saw yesterday at training was a real camaraderie and family atmosphere, and I’ve been around a lot of professional sports clubs in my life. The manager has built something special there, especially considering that the club is playing so far from home. It’s been incredible what he’s been able to do.
“I’m not worried about relegation. But if Paul or Alex came to me and said we need x, y, z or we’re going to go down — which they haven’t as they have utmost confidence in the player pool they have — we would provide it.
“We don’t want to get relegated, but it wouldn’t sour us on the deal if we were. That division below is incredibly difficult to get out of so when we’ve already done the work to get up, why not maintain it? I have faith in the boys that we’re not going down.”
As for the manager, Perez is very clear on Paul Wotton’s importance going forward: “He appears to be fully on board with the project and we are certainly fully on board with him. We want his long-term commitment.”
Perez sums up his approach to Truro City by putting it into the broader context of the county overall: “Cornwall deserves nice things. It deserves to have something that other places in the country have. It deserves a football club that performs on and off the pitch, that cultivates talent, that focuses on youth and embodies the spirit of this incredible place. That to me is the main goal in this thing.
“Truro City needs a new, younger, more vibrant way forward and I think we’re going to provide that.”
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Fantastic piece. Great work from Eric and his team.