Truro City plan a new stadium in Cornwall and could return next season

Truro City have now designed a stadium with less than a third of the capacity of what was originally proposed for the site

Truro City could return to Cornwall as early as next season.

The Southern Premier South club have been playing their games at Plymouth Parkway's Bolitho Park since the summer of 2021 after selling Treyew Road.

The club hopes to build 3,000 capacity ground on the site of the Stadium for Cornwall on Truro's outskirts that had originally been intended for 10,000.

It will be paid for by money the club has from the sale of Treyew Road that has been held by Cornwall Council

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"It's going to be massive for the club," Truro City's consultant Alex Black told BBC Spotlight.

"At Treyew Road they had great atmosphere, but I think everybody did recognize that stadium was probably getting a little bit tired.

"But it was still by far and away the best football ground in the whole of Cornwall, and what we're going to be building now will be a much better version than that, it will actually be one of the best football facilities in the South West, so it's going to be great for us.

"It's great that the team are doing well and are the top of the league, but we really want to be doing that in front of some good crowds and our fans, and that's what we're doing it all for."

Truro first left Treyew Road to play at Torquay United in 2018

Truro have had a nomadic life of late - they initially shared with Torquay United in 2018 before returning to Treyew Road early in 2019 after work to turn the ground into a supermarket was delayed.

But once work started in the summer of 2021 the club moved to Bolitho Park and have played there ever since.

"Obviously it was disappointing when we had to leave Treyew Road eventually, but one of the big positives of that was that we banked the money which was required for the football club share to build a new facility," Black added.

"That's been sat with the Council since we went, who've obviously been protecting it, being safeguarding it for us, and now we're ready to ready to spend it on a new home."

The original stadium was to be the base for Cornwall's main football and rugby teams, with community and conference facilities

The move comes after the original plans for the Stadium for Cornwall at the site - which would have also housed the Cornish Pirates rugby union team - collapsed in June.

Cornwall Council decided not to put the project forward for government levelling-up funding.

But Black says there is still hope that Truro's new facility could grow in the future to a size which would be suitable for Premiership rugby, which needs at least a 10,000 capacity.

"It's going to be built in such a way that it can be developed into the future to be something much grander," he added.

"Obviously funds need to be in place to move that up to 5,000, and should everything fall into place this could still potentially become the 10,000 seater stadium that everybody hoped for and has been trying to get for such a long time."