DOVER Athletic Football Club have got four weeks to raise £48,000 - otherwise they will go bust.

That is the stark reality facing the club, insists Whites chairman Mick Kemp as he begins to mobilise a campaign designed to keep a senior football club in the town.

Whites have been hit by a "double whammy" in the shape of a demand for £23,000 from the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, and a further £25,000 from the Vat office - both by December 31.

The demand for £23,000 was not unexpected. It had been known for some time that Whites could be forced to cough up that amount towards their CVA repayment after creditors decied that the club should have paid a chunk of their profits from the FA Cup run in 2002-03, when they were knocked out in the first round proper by Oxford United, to accelerate their debt repayments.

But the retrospective demand from the VAT man came as an unwelcome bolt out of the blue, following an investigation by the agency into the club's accounts for the past three seasons.

Mr Kemp admitted: "The club have not been paying VAT on hot food sold at kiosks inside the ground. Dover Athletic were led to believe that this food is classed as takeaway food and, as such, we did not need to pay VAT on what we sell.

"But as I understand it now, if you heat something up, like hot dogs and hamburgers, then its VAT-able. If we had just sold sandwiches, then we would have been ok.

"We have lodged an appeal but it's on pretty slim grounds. The regulations are down to interpretation, and where interpretation is concerned the VAT man always wins. And, to be honest, I would rather deal with the CVA and VAT items in one go and get it over and done with. I don't want it to drag on into next year.""

Two years ago, when Mr Kemp became chairman, he secured the Whites into the CVA to pay off debts of around £400,000, which now costs the club around £3,000 every month to service.

And with home gates of around 500, some 150 less than Dover's "breakeven" figure for this season, the club have been left to find nearly £50,000 by New Year's Eve or be closed down.

Stories about Dover Athletic facing a cash crisis and possible exctinction have hardly been a rare phenomenon, but Mr Kemp stressed: "We are not messing about over this. If we don't come up with the money by December 31, that's it the club is finished.

"To raise £48,000 in four weeks is a tough task, and the timing is not great with Christmas coming up, because that's never a good time to ask people to give you money. But, on the other hand, it might turn out to be a very nice Christmas present for the club if we can somehow raise the money."

The club have formed a fighting fund which will be supervised by a three-man group of Trustees, including Dover Town Centre manager Mike Webb.

Mr Kemp, who is appealing to the town's businesses to save the club from closure, said: "The Trustees are not going to raise the money, but they are going to handle it when it comes in.

None of the money raised will be touched by the club until sufficient has been raised to clear the obligations. Should this not be achieved, then all monies will be returned untouched to the donors by the Trustees."

"We have done it this way so that people won't feel that they are donating to a potential 'lost cause', and that their money won't disappear down a black hole somewhere. This money is for a specific item, to pay off the extra CVA and VAT demands, and that's how it will be treated."

Dover, of course, have been all through a similar situation before, with the former Dover FC folding in May 1983 to be replaced by the new club, Dover Athletic, in the old Southern League first division. As things things turned out, the club gradually revived over the next 10 years until they won a place in the Conference in 1993.

But Mr Kemp warns that, even if a new club did arise out of the ashes of the existing one, the scenario this time is very different. "If a new club was formed, it would probably have to start at the bottom of the local non-league pyramid, which in our case is the Kent County League.

"And, to be honest, with the overheads involved in the upkeep of Crabble, playing in front of 50 people in the Kent County League just wouldn't be a viable proposition, and that's why it's so important that we save the club that we have got now."

Former Premiership referee David Elleray has joined the campaign to save the club. He was the guest speaker at a sold out sportmans dinner on Thursday night.

* KM-fm sports editor Simon Watts spoke to Dover's director of finance Steve Cattermole about the problems at the Hoverspeed Stadium...