Truro City captain Connor Riley-Lowe says the club is facing "crunch time" in their survival fight in the National League.
Truro City captain Connor Riley-Lowe says the club is facing "crunch time" in their survival fight in the National League.
The Cornish club are in their first-ever season in the fifth tier after winning National League South last season.
Having only turned professional last summer the Tinners have found life tough, winning just five of their 28 games and finding themselves second-from-bottom.
They travel to third-from-bottom Morecambe on Saturday, seven points from the safetly line with 18 games to go.
"We've played everyone now, we know what to expect, I guess it's crunch time, isn't it?" Riley-Lowe told BBC Radio Cornwall.
"We've got to start getting results now or else ultimately we will go down."
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Truro's form has picked up since Christmas - they have lost once in that time at leaders Rochdale and picked up six points along the way as well as making the National League Cup semi-finals.
They still have games to play against most of the sides around them in the bottom part of the table.
"If we focus on performance hopefully the result comes with it," he added.
"In games recently where we've performed well, results have come. We played well against Wealdstone, we won the game, we played well against Forest Green, we got a point.
"Sometimes they don't, sometimes they do, but I think that the main thing that we'll be looking for is to put on a good performance and try and find a little bit of momentum.
"It's not just the Morecambe game, we've got games coming out of our ears in the next couple of weeks, so we've got to try and find something to build a little bit of momentum and hopefully that will start on Saturday."
Putting season into perspective
Whatever happens over the next few months Riley-Lowe is keen to put Truro's achievements in perspective.
The former Exeter City youngster quit his job as a PE teacher to go full-time with the Tinners this season, a situation many of last year's squad have also done in leaving their former jobs.
The club moved to a new ground at the start of last season and have risen from playing in the Southern League to the top tier of non-league football.
"I replied to one of the fans on Twitter [X] early in December because he was moaning about our fixture list coming up saying 'we've got some travelling, we've got York away, Rochdale away, Southend away' and I just said 'look you've got to put it into perspective'.
"If you could have told me that was our Christmas period three years ago when we were in the Southern Premier League I would have snapped your hand off for it.
"The players don't want to be in the relegation zone, the staff don't want to be in the relegation zone and we're working very, very hard to get ourselves out of it.
"But ultimately we're in a very tough league and one that the club itself hasn't had much experience in.
"We're learning not only on the pitch, but we're learning off the pitch a lot as well at the minute."
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