By Gareth Davies

PRE-SEASON FRIENDLY (TUESDAY)

Falmouth Town 0 Truro City 4

TRURO City retained the Aubrey Wilkes Trophy with a comfortable four-goal victory over fierce local rivals Falmouth Town.

Similar to City’s last pre-season outing at Tiverton, the game was virtually over as a contest inside the first 45 minutes, as John Askey’s side found the mark three times.

With a raft of substitutions made after the interval, City scored just once more through Tyler Harvey, but the performance once again gave optimism for Truro’s upcoming Vanarama National League South campaign, which begins against Dorking Wanderers in 10 days time.

Truro opened the scoring at Bickland Park inside the first 60 seconds in slightly fortunate circumstances. A cross into the box from A Trialist hit Ryan Law after he collided with home debutant Harrison Jewell, with ball bouncing over Morgan Coxhead and into an unguarded net.

Falmouth then had a good chance to restore parity when Oscar Massey, who had spent the early part of pre-season on trial with the Tinners, was denied by a brilliant Tom Harrison cover tackle.

The visitors were then forced into an early change when B Trialist was forced off injured, replaced by Dom Johnson-Fisher.

And the replacement nearly made an instant impact after 17 minutes, but after cutting inside the Falmouth rearguard, his effort was easily gathered by Coxhead.

Shortly after, the second City goal did finally arrive as referee Rowan Clarke played a good advantage on separate occasions in the same passage of play. This saw a through ball to Andrew Neal and he made no mistake to finish past the onrushing Coxhead.

Johnson-Fisher, Tylor Love-Holmes and A Trialist then had half chances before a third goal arrived two minutes before the turnaround.

Yassine En-Neyah charged into the box and his low cross into the fabled corridor of uncertainty, was bundled into his own net by a Falmouth defender.

After the break, City had a penalty appeal turned down with a triple substitution on the hour mark resulting in a fourth goal.

Will Dean delivered a trademark free-kick into the box and Harvey got in front of the Falmouth defence to finish emphatically.

As time ticked down, substitute Billy Palfrey and E Trialist almost added a fifth which would have put the gloss on a City victory which was once again polished and professional.

TRURO CITY: Lavercombe, A Trialist (Palfrey, 60), Law, Dean, Harrison (E Trialist, 82), Sanders, En-Neyah (Rooney, 60), Love-Holmes, Sanogo (Higgins, 82), Neal, (D Trialist, 73), B Trialist (Johnson-Fisher, 14, Harvey, 60).

FALMOUTH TOWN: Coxhead, Jewell, Leivers, Calleja-Steyne, Annear, Ward, Fisher, Sims, Hutchinson, Massey, Thomas. Subs: Edney, Symons, Webber, Everall, Brabyn, Fletcher.

Referee: Rowan Clarke.