HEREFORD United’s non-executive director Bob Pritchard has been outlining the stark choices facing the club within the next week.

The Bulls have been served with a winding-up order by HMRC which will see them in the Royal Courts of Justice on April 7 for non-payment of £78,000 in tax.

Effectively the club has to find the £78,000 by next Friday in order for the monies to have time to work their way through the financial system.

Pritchard said the there are two potential outcomes if the club fails to pay the outstanding amount.

“We are either wound up because we have not paid the £78,000 tax bill so the club ceases and, as far as I’m aware, we don’t finish our fixtures,” he said.

“Or we apply through an administrator to go into administration, and the administrator has to seek an adjournment to the winding-up order.

“To do that, he has to get a solicitor to make the application and, in his application, he has to produce evidence to say that we can find a financial way of overcoming it so he can discuss that with the creditors.

“So because we have gone into administration in order to defend the adjournment, we will be deducted 10 points at the beginning of next season.

“But we still have to find a way of paying off the creditors and it could be over a three-year period, it could take five years.

“But, as I understand what the administrator as saying, if he is unable to agree a payment schedule within six weeks, then he will have to wind us up.

“If we have not paid our football creditors by the Conference AGM in June, we could be expelled by the Conference and have to find a place to play which is another two or three feeders down.

“The £78,000 will buy us two months because the next writ, and we will get one, I’m not hiding the fact, will not come for at least two months by which time we are into June and planning for next year so just getting the £78,000 through buys us some time. “