Hello Everyone,
Very sorry, but I'm afraid this is my last City Alert. For purely personal reasons, I have this morning resigned as Truro City's press officer. This means that with immediate effect the City Alerts service is being closed down, ditto my weekly Truro City column in the Sunday Independent and my match day programme contributions. I am furnishing the club with all my media contacts for press releases.
With the closedown of the City Alerts website, I am anticipating that I will now also lose my editor@cityalerts.co.uk email address immediately. So for any continuing personal contact please use my main address, mike@goldenreplay.com, and if ever you have any problems with that one, try mikegold1@btconnect.com.
I like to think that I leave Truro City's PR - its communications with fans and media - in a much healthier state than just over three years ago, when I started the club's Sunday Independent column and conceived and developed City Alerts.
I'm also very hopeful that, with the structure, personnel and policies now in place, my leaving will result in little if any overall difference in the club's relations with its fans and media.
I have enjoyed my time at the heart of the club immensely and I wish Peter and Pep in particular all the success in the world with their new interest!
Reflecting on the past three years, a very special word of thanks must - of course - go to Lee Hodges. I will miss my regular chats with him, at least twice a week, very much. He is that rare breed in football - someone who manages to succeed despite being a genuine nice guy and a gentleman. I know all supporters, to a man, will be right behind me when I say that we have been incredibly fortunate in having such an outstandingly able young man at the helm throughout this extremely difficult period.
Lee has forged an unprecedentedly close link - and mutual respect - with the fans in that time, and (yep, seems such a long time ago now) guided the club so impressively to promotion from the Southern League Premier Division in 2011.
He must have lost count of the times he went to hell and back during those darkest weeks of them all last autumn, but he was always there - for me and all the media - ready to co-operate, ready to answer all the awkward questions, ready to "take it on the chin" when it seemed things just could not get any worse.
Similarly, the way his players demonstrated their commitment to the club by continuing to play, week after week and frequently with Herculean efforts and performances on the pitch - and while they were being unpaid for it all, to boot - was just incredible. Repeat, incredible.
Of this, and the whole amazing, crazy season with all its dramas, traumas, highs and lows, I think I can safely say that in all my 46 years as a full-time professional writer . . . I have never known anything quite like it!!
As for the club's fans, my heartfelt thanks to all those of you who have got in touch and encouraged me to "keep up the good work" with these City Alerts.
I guess it's really a case of watch this space now for City Alerts. Either someone else within the club will pick it up and run with it, or you will simply see an even more lively official club website, which will be no bad thing anyway. So keep visiting that website!
For now, it's over and out from me, although I look forward very much to continuing to watch City next season, purely as a paying spectator, and I hope more than I can say that by then the club will have stability and sustainability, and that the standard of football we have come to expect and cherish in recent seasons will be back again in double-quick time.
MIKE TRUSCOTT
