Boss Paul Wotton wants a ‘positive response’ from his Truro City side when they face St Albans City on Saturday in National League South, writes Gareth Davies.

City travel to Hertfordshire looking to bounce back from a 4-1 reverse at the hands of promotion chasers Chelmsford City last time out.

A brace of George Alexander penalties, alongside single strikes from Cameron James and Ody Alfa saw the Clarets prevail. Tyler Harvey netted City’s goal in the first half after he profited on a defensive mix-up.

Truro were due to play Weymouth on Tuesday, but that game was called off owing to a waterlogged pitch at Wordsworth Drive. The free midweek has given Wotton’s injured players such as Ed Palmer and Andrew Neal time to recover, although the City chief said it was too early to say if they will feature against the Saints. 

“Those players will have four days extra to recover,” Wotton told trurocity.co.uk, “We will see how they go after training but whoever plays, we need them to react and for there to be a positive response after the Chelmsford game. 

“The positive response will be scrapping for every ball, every challenge and hopefully, on Saturday, that will be good enough. If it isn’t, we will just roll our sleeves up and keep going.”

When Truro faced St Albans earlier in the season, City were 3-1 victors with Neal, Will Dean and Adam Porter on target.

That result demonstrates that City can mix it with National League South’s best, with Wotton wanting his side to ‘fight’ for points at Clarence Park, against a St Albans side that will want three points for very differing reasons.

“When you are a newly promoted team, staying in the league you’ve been promoted into is the first objective,” the 46-year-old added. “We haven’t hit that yet, whilst the objective for St Albans every season is to reach the play-offs.

“There are definitely different objectives for both football teams, but that doesn’t deter from the importance of the game. Both teams will want to win for very different reasons.

“We can beat teams like St Albans, which has been proven this season, but the flip side to that is if we are not on it, we will be in for a tough afternoon.

“St Albans are a very good team, who play total football. We are going to have to fight for everything if we are to get something from the game.”

Wotton, who led his side to promotion to Step Two via the Southern League play-offs last term, will lead his City side on a hectic end of season schedule, which will see Truro play an eye-watering 14 games in 35 days, between Saturday and the season end of April 20.

The fixture congestion only increased after the side’s most recent scheduled game against Weymouth was postponed with the former Plymouth Argyle captain labeling the position his charges find themselves in as ‘unprecedented’. 

“The frustration of games being called off, without wanting to be too dramatic, is horrific,” he revealed. “We have 14 games to play in 35 days and none of them are going to be played within the vicinity of home for this football club.

“It is an unprecedented situation we find ourselves in and to have the game on Tuesday against Weymouth called off was a bit of a hammer blow.

“After the Chelmsford result, we wanted to play again quickly and put things right. We couldn’t do that, through no fault of our own. This is just another thing that stacked against us.

“But we don’t listen to outside noise as we are a very tight bunch, and we will go to work again on Saturday.”