Truro City face liquidation after failing to reach Conference deal

Source: BBC Sport 19.30 hours LINK

Truro City face being suspended from the Football Conference and being liquidated after a last-ditch bid to save the club failed.

The lawyer for the administrator James Moore says the League rejected a plan to save the club before their 17:00 BST deadline for a financial bond.

"It looks as if it's heading towards liquidation," he told BBC South West.

"There were various proposals put forward with guarantee but nothing was agreed with the Conference."

It comes after initial indications from the Conference that the club had struck a deal for a bond to cover the travel costs of teams coming to Treyew Road should the club fold.

The Conference had placed a deadline of 17:00 BST on Thursday but extended that by an hour.

Earlier in the evening the League's spokesman Colin Peake told the BBC that he expected a deal to be done, subject to money being put into the Conference's account.

"Unless something dramatically happens in the next few hours, or early in the morning, I think this will be it," Moore said.

It means Truro's game with Dover Athletic is likely to be called off and the club thrown out of the league.

"It's massively upsetting, we were prepared to continue playing but the Conference won't let us," Moore added.

There were hopes that £10,000 bond from Cornwall Council to cover the club's next 10 games, taking them up to 15 December, would be accepted.

However, even if the club had paid the bond, Truro City boss Lee Hodges said there were no guarantees that the players would play.

He told BBC South West Sport that his players, who are owed three months' wages, are waiting for a payment of half a month's money from the administrators.

"We just don't know what's going on at the moment," he said.

"We all agreed on everything and the administrators agreed on it as well.

"With no-one in charge at the club and no money at the club there'll be no way the club can go forward.

"We're owed nearly three months' money at the moment. We're looking at 50% of a month's wages.

"We're not asking for it all, we just want a little bit of money as people are struggling at home."

City entered administration after owner and chairman Kevin Heaney was declared bankrupt and left the club.

Former Truro manager Steve Massey decided to drop a bid for the club last week and said: "As a business proposition you'd walk away from it, it just doesn't make sense."

The club had risen from playing local league football to two divisions off the Football league after five promotions in six years following funding from Heaney.

But the club were served with a winding-up petition by HM Revenue and Customs in September last year over an unpaid tax bill and faced a debt claim of £700,000.

After entering administration in August, the Football Conference gave City the 11 October takeover deadline at the end of last month to agree to a sale or face expulsion.