Well done to Barrie and Barry. For firm and decisive action. This will pull everyone together and let the players know they are trying to resolve it.

I take it this £8,000 is from the Premier League payment? IF so when they gave it to non league football did it have a clause stating 'clubs owing money to HMRC should not get it'. I bet not. The money is due to the clubs competing in the leagues. I doubt there were any clauses.


£8k will help the club - why hold it back? The only obviously answer is the conference are scared we'll go under and lose their 8k. Shocking to think that a league will gamble with one of their member clubs future to save 8k.

Embargo -  fine if it's the same for all clubs but it's not.

No deal with the HMRC? Why did we go to court then and get an arrangement to pay back money in 14 weeks time.

This situation from the league is very suspicious.

I obviously don't know the details but there's a big difference between the petition being adjourned for 14 weeks because Welling have made some significant payments and there's potential for the debt being cleared and an arrangement to pay HMRC. If we had agreed with HMRC that we would pay £x per month commencing ddmmyy that is an arrangement to pay and I think the Conference would struggle to maintain the embargo on the rules that I've seen but if Welling had gone down that route and hadn't kept up the payments then things would have been difficult. If it has been simply adjourned we probably remain in breach of the rules and the Conference must apply them, otherwise they would have to scrap them completely. If you start applying them inconsistently the clubs that are treated more harshly would inevitably take action against them. Remember these are new rules so you can't compare what's gone on in the past. I'm not sticking up for the Conference either, the Hampton ground grading fiasco demonstrated that they are basically clueless.

Surely if there was not some sort of formal agreement with HMRC be it an agreement to pay £x pm or to pay off all/as much of the debt as is possible by the date of the next hearing there would have been no adjournment and the judge would have made a ruling re the winding up petition. That being the case HMRC are giving us a chance and the questions is why aren't the Conference?

As far as the £8K goes if it is the Premier League money surely it is intended to go to give clubs budgets a boost and not sit in the coffers of the Conference. Will we get interest if it is finally released as the Conference will no doubt have earned some while they are 'looking after it'?

Whilst we should never have got into the mess we are in and I don't know all the facts it just seems to me that far from helping as HMRC are the Conference, perhaps through hastily drawn up and poorly drafted rules, are piling more troubles on us.

The thrust of my opinion is that the creditors, HMRC, are being helpful and the Conference on the face of it appear to be obstructing our ability to respond to the helpful stance of our creditor.  The £8K which they are withholding is 12.5% of the outstanding debt.

I can understand not being able to sign new players whilst we resolve the matter but not being able to register those we had already signed (who despite the problem remain committed to the Club) and are paying is to say the very least unhelpful to the Club and ultimately, if it has not already done so, brings about an unsatisifactory degree of inequality yet equality seems to be a 'buzzword' of the Conference.  In 2 weeks time even if they allowed the registration of Clarkey and Pires we still can't field the permitted 11 + 7 on the bench for our FA Cup tie.

There should also be a facility for emergency registration of non contract/loan players in the event that we have an injury crisis - what happens if Charlie, who has played some games heavily strapped, was unable to play?  Is there this facility for a Club under a player embargo?

-- Edited by bruno on Saturday 11th of September 2010 11:33:20 AM

The 8k will come off the debt we owe, as the Conference will forward to HMRC. So thats 55k to raise now. I suspect Barrie was expecting this ... he made reference to it at the last meeting.

I will clarify with Barrie when I see him, or call Monday.