All is not well at Truro City right now.
As if suffering relegation back to the Southern Premier League for the first time since 2015 wasn’t bad enough for the White Tigers.
Alas, it never rains but it pours.
Demotion back to Step 3 of the National League System is one thing, and the resulting departure of key players – last season’s top-scorer Tyler Harvey has returned to Bath City, for example – is also fairly inevitable.
But it hasn't ended there.
Now it seems that manager Paul Wilkinson, who only signed a two-year deal at Treyew Road two weeks ago, may be on his way as well.
That is according to The Bolton News, which has reported that English Football League One club Bury have targeted the White Tigers gaffer as their replacement for promotion-winning boss Ryan Lowe, who has replaced Derek Adams in the hot seat at Plymouth Argyle.
Why Bury? Well, Bury are the latest professional club to find themselves in a world of financial trouble, with their players and staff having gone without pay for a number of months.
That has forced Shakers icon Lowe, and many of the players, to look for paid work elsewhere, leaving a manager-sized hole in the dugout at Gigg Lane.
And it looks like Truro boss Wilkinson might be the man to fill that hole.
It is the last news that those connected to Truro would have wanted. There have already been murmurs of discontent from the fan base around the club’s lack of players.
Barely ten players turned up to pre-season training at the weekend and a number of those were Truro College students involved in the Chelsea FC Foundation.
There is no doubt that Paul will have been hard at work trying to find players for their upcoming Southern League campaign, and his departure, which would effectively render that hard work redundant, would be catastrophic for Truro.
They would then have to go through the process of recruiting their third manager in less than 12 months, with previous gaffer Leigh Robinson having been and gone during last year’s ill-fated campaign.
That would probably take a few days at the very least, by which time their pre-season friendly schedule will be well underway, with Truro set to host Exeter City and, ironically, Lowe’s Argyle within the next week or so.
What won’t help them in their manager search will be the fact that every prospective candidate will be fully aware of the amount of work required in recruiting nearly a completely new squad for the new season, which begins in just a few weeks, and making sure that it is competitive at that level.
Who is going to have a strong enough stomach to want to take on that task? Not many, you would think.
This is all in the assumption that Wilkinson does take the Bury job, of course. He may well stay at Truro, given that Bury is hardly a mouth-watering proposition at this time.
But if he does, then the decision to appoint his successor will be a colossal one.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here