THE Farnborough fiasco has taken another twist after their opening three Ryman Premier fixtures were pulled – as one of the affected clubs hit out at the league for their handling of the situation.
Troubled Boro’s early season trio of games, at VCD Athletic on Saturday, Monday’s meeting with Harrow Borough and this Saturday’s scheduled match with Wingate, are all postponed as the Hampshire club fight a £30,000 bond demand.
Boro have been told the league need financial assurances but the club have gone to war and exercised their right to appeal, meaning early season chaos and cancellations for the rest.
VCD manager Keith McMahon is furious his side were left without a game on the opening day and says it’s unacceptable that the debate surrounding their inclusion is now into its fourth month.
This is the second season out of the last three that Farnborough have failed to kick-off the season on time after a bond of £100,000 was called in by the Football Conference in 2013.
Bookmakers Paddy Power eventually bailed them out before their barmy player re-naming publicity stunt was kicked into touch.
Sensible
McMahon told The NLP: “It’s just not good enough, it’s stupid. How has this been able to go on this long? It’s just like the Salisbury City situation last summer, it’s very poor.
“The club was voted in at the June AGM, right? How can that have been if the league knew there were issues outstanding? Why wasn’t this bond put forward earlier?
“Our players were ready to go and now they’re doing nothing. It’s shallow minded, and our club still have to pay the players of course.
“We were going to have a good crowd on Saturday but now we’ll lose out, they’ll end up coming here on a Tuesday in October and the gate won’t be half. We printed programmes and it will cost us. It’s unfair mainly because they have publicly said they can hardly put a team together. They have been given more time to sort their squad out and they’ll be stronger when we do get to play them.”
The Ryman League confirmed the first three league games plus the League Cup tie with Lewes on August 17 are off.
Chairman Nick Robinson said: “The initial decision of the board was that no matches would be played unless the bond was paid by 10am on Thursday morning.
“The appeal only went in on Tuesday night, but, collectively, the board still felt it sensible to request to the appeal board that Farnborough’s matches be suspended until it was all resolved.”
Farnborough boss Spencer Day said: “We have to fight our corner.” The club are still awaiting the outcome of their CVA, with a creditors’ meeting set for next week.
