Following the recent devastating news that the club that others had asked, 'how we did it?', had actually been fiddling it all along, comes the verdict of the Conference board as to what our punishment will be.

All this surfaced a few months back when, in a boardroom coup, Dave Reynolds took over the running of the club from former chairman Barry Norgrove.  Technically Norgrove is still on the board of Aggborough Holdings but has stepped back while his mess is sorted out.  It was under his stewardship that an accountant was employed, or not, that failed to submit the correct tax and payroll details on time and over a period of time.

This all came to light just prior to a meeting with the fans, called by Reynolds and his sidekick Mark Serrell.  We were told that the club was in a bad way financially and would be struggling to survive into the New Year if a sum of a minimum of £150,000 was not found soon.

The fans group, KHIST, kicked the fundraising off with a new lottery that would help breech the shortfall and new investors were sought by the club at a business lunch and through the press.

The only one to have popped his head above the parapet so far was a Stratford based business man named Chris Swan but the jib of his cut was not received too well by many of the fans or equally more importantly by the new board.

The latest reports are that we are part way to finding enough cash to keep going a little longer but not quite enough just yet.  The killer would be in what form the Conference would punish the club and if that punishment would push us over the brink by being either a massive points deduction that would see us losing our place in the Blue Square Bet Premier or, or both, an equally massive fine that would cripple the club and so possibly put us out of business.

So what is the Conference boards verdict then?

Well I'm pleased to say that they seem to have seen sense and we have been docked five points and given a £5,000 fine suspended for two years.  The loss of five points will see the club drop from the present 6th place/38 points to 9th place and 33 points.

That still gives the club a very good chance to make a bid for the play-offs and also a reminder to keep their house in order and not to employ any more dodgy looking accountants.

The Harriers manager Steve Burr also made an effort to help balance the books today when centre half Ollie Thorne (left) was sent out on a month long loan to Rushden & Diamonds.

Ollie has played ten games for us but lost his place when he was sent off against York City in the FA Cup in October.  He missed three games but once his time had been served he found it hard to regain his place in the side from Tom Sharpe.  He did play against Newport County but was then dropped back to the bench on New Years Day for the visit of Forest Green.