MATCH PREVIEW: Chippenham Town vs Truro City | National League South | Monday 1st April 2024

Matt Billett previews our Easter Monday clash against Truro City.

We return to the Thornbury Surfacing Stadium on Easter Monday for the fixture against Truro City, where the Bluebirds will still be looking to extend their winning streak to five wins on the bounce after Friday’s game against Farnborough was postponed due to the condition of the pitch at Cherrywood Road.

Chippenham are still fighting for a place in the play-offs this season and will be encouraged by the fact that St Albans City, Bath City and Hampton & Richmond Borough all dropped points in Friday’s fixtures. A win for Chippenham on Monday won’t take them any higher in the league standings but it will put them ever closer to the play-off places, trailing Aveley by just six points with two games in hand.

Truro City were founded in 1889 and are the highest-ranked club in Cornwall. They were founding members of the South Western League in 1951 where they won the title five times in their history. They remained in the South Western League until 2006 when they joined the Western Football League. During the season of 2006/07, they won the FA Vase beating AFC Totton 3-1 at the new Wembley Stadium in front of a record FA Vase crowd.

More recently, they have been in and out of the National League South (NLS) due to going into administration but were promoted back into the league last season after beating Bracknell Town with a last-minute winner in the play-off final. They currently sit 17th in the league, just five points clear of the relegation zone, but due to well-known issues with their home ground and fixture list, they have between four and five games in hand on those below them.

The two sides have played each other nine times in their history with the Bluebirds being victorious on six of those occasions, and Truro winning the other three. Chippenham’s recent record against Truro makes for pleasant reading for Monday’s home fans as they have won their last four games against the White Tigers and in this season’s away fixture, they produced a comfortable 2-0 win thanks to a brace from Matt McClure.

Truro look to be in for a tough ride until the end of the season, scheduled to play their remaining ten games in just 20 days, with their home games being played nearly 200 miles away at Meadow Park, Gloucester. This could mean manager Paul Wotton is forced to rest and rotate his squad against the Bluebirds, making his team difficult to predict coming into Monday’s fixture.

We welcome Tom Harrison back to the Thornbury Surfacing Stadium where he enjoyed a short spell with us, he played six times and scored once during his time at the club before signing for Gloucester City in January 2021.

Tom Owen-Evans also faces his former side this week; he joined Truro City on loan from Newport County in March 2018 and while he only made four appearances for the club, he scored twice before heading back to his parent club following the end of the loan.

The most well-known name associated with Truro City in Wales International is Kieffer Moore. Moore started his incredibly successful footballing career at Truro in the 2012/13 season where he made 22 appearances for the club, scoring 13 times. He has since gone on to play for Wigan Athletic, Cardiff City and even made 35 Premier League appearances for AFC Bournemouth where he scored five goals. The striker is now on loan at promotion-fighting Ipswich Town where he has made ten appearances, scoring six goals; and is still a regular in the Welsh national team, racking up 41 caps so far.

Another notable name is New Zealander Rory Fallon, who made 12 appearances for Truro in 2016. Fallon made 24 appearances for the New Zealand national team and also enjoyed a stint as assistant manager for the All Whites.

Andrew Neal is the main man to look out for this Monday. The centre-forward is enjoying his second spell at the club and has played in 33 of Truro’s 36 games this season, tallying ten goals. Two of those goals came as a brace in Truro’s last outing against Slough which they won 3-2. Another name to look out for is 21-year-old Adam Porter. Formally of the Stoke City academy, Porter is also enjoying his second spell at the club after recently departing from Salford City and has racked up six goals in his 31 appearances this season from centre-midfield.

As far as Chippenham are concerned, it will have been nine days since the game against Welling on Monday, meaning the squad has had lots of time to rest and recover; and as Gary Horgan hasn’t tampered with the starting eleven much during the win streak, it looks unlikely that we’ll see any changes to the starting eleven against Truro.

So, we’ve still got six games to play and a lot to play for. The lads will be no doubt be confident that they can get a result against Truro and continue the winning streak to push for those play-off places; but, with Truro looking to pull away from the relegation zone, they’ll put up a tough fight which should make for a cracker of a game on Easter Monday.

Once again – be loud and get behind the boys for this big game.

COME ON YOU BLUEBIRDS!