National League to 'ask FA for £17m financial package' to save clubs during coronavirus outbreak

All fixtures in the division have been suspended until at least April 3 but it is likely that will be extended.

According to The Athletic, the chief executive of the National League, Mike Tattersall, will put forward the plan to the FA later this week and tell them that without this funding, the majority of clubs will not be able to pay their staff.

The funding is for the top two divisions of the National League, which is 68 clubs, and works out on average at just under £250,000 each.

“The airline industry has gone down 75 per cent, which is very, very unfortunate for them,” Tattersall told The Athletic. “We are down 100 per cent. We haven’t got any matches. Our income is almost down to zero for the time being. But we’ve got a lot of employees to look after. If we’re going to look after people, we need an intervention. We need to try to establish football, or at least non-league football, as one of the industries, the sectors, that the government regards as being an acute case.”

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On Tuesday Barnet FC announced it was putting all non-playing staff on redundancy notice, while Hartlepool United’s chief executive, Mark Maguire, has said “there is a genuine feeling clubs will go under.”

The Athletic also reports that the National League sent out cashflow forecasting forms to all 68 clubs on Tuesday to find out how much money they would need to keep going, to come up with a total figure they could take to the FA.

Tattersall adeed: “We will take it to the FA this week. This is the focus of our league now. To communicate with government and with the FA in order to make the economic case.

“What we want is that when we come back out of the coronavirus, we want football to return. The football club will return a lot of benefit to its community, but if it’s sacked all its players, and hit financial distress, we won’t be able to switch it back on. If we want to switch it back on, we need money now to preserve it, so it can come back into operation quickly. If they don’t have that money, it won’t be there.”