SOCCER:BOHEMIANS HAVE appealed to the club's supporters to help it raise €300,000 over the coming week's in order to get the Setanta Cup champions through the licensing process and ensure that it is able to play League of Ireland football again next season

Club officials acknowledge that a further €400,000 is likely to be required so that the club can start next season without “a hangover of debt,” but say that they hope to raise this money by obtaining loans, secured against the ground, from professional investors.

After a week of internal discussions and a series of preliminary meetings with players aimed at reducing costs through the close season and into next year, the club will hold a meeting for supporters at St Peter’s Hall, Phibsborough, next Tuesday night where the scale of the financial crisis will be spelt out.

Bohemians has around 500 members, and a core fan base of thousands more, and many of these have responded to previous appeals for funds as the club’s financial situation deteriorated in the wake of the property deal with Liam Carroll collapsing.

Despite this the club’s officials will look to the supporters to generate the funds it requires to meet its commitments to players and the Revenue Commissioners through a mixture of loans, donations and miscellaneous fundraising activities.

“It’s going be very difficult,” admitted club PRO Brian Trench, “but the attitude of the meeting we had last night was that we have to give it a go because the alternative is simply too awful to contemplate.”

“And while we are trying to raise that money we will be embarking on a separate, slightly longer term plan to raise a similar sum in the form of loans.”

The paperwork required to seek such funding has only recently been completed and he expects the process to get underway almost immediately.

The sum involved is actually slightly larger, at around €400,000, but Trench insisted that it would be a mistake to “get too hung up,” on the specific figures as “two successful transfers would change the situation pretty significantly.”

Representatives of the club have been meeting with players over the past few days in the hope of persuading some senior squad members to allow their contracts to be terminated.