THE sale of Priestfield Stadium may be a price Gillingham must pay for survival. As the club's financial problems lurched towards a full-blown crisis, chairman Paul Scally said he could not rule out selling the ground but emphasised it would be a last resort.

Priestfield has been Gillingham's home for 110 years, since September 2, 1893. It was recently valued at just over £14 million.

With the club's bankers, the Bank of Scotland, refusing to increase their overdraft limit of £7.5 million, Mr Scally could sell to property developers and lease back the ground or use the sale to finance and fulfil his dream of relocating to a super stadium at Strood's Temple Marsh.

First, the club will attempt to sell their best players and not renew the contracts of the highest earners when they expire next summer in an attempt to avert financial meltdown.

Mr Scally said: "Selling the ground is not a course I want to take. But if I have no success on many of my other initiatives, then it may be the only course left open to me. That would be a last resort and obviously it would not be the most suitable.

"Priestfield was recently valued at just over £14 million so it would raise a substantial amount of money. But we would lose our ground and history has shown that it's not the most appropriate way to go for clubs who want to carry on going forward and who are ambitious."

Mr Scally, who has said that Gillingham would go into administration 'over my dead body', disclosed that but for the investment in Priestfield's conference and banqueting facilities, the club's plight would be a lot worse.

"It's not through bad trading or bad management that we find ourselves in this position," he added. "If we hadn't built the conference and banqueting facilities I don't think it would be a question of whether we're going into administration. I think we would be in administration already and maybe liquidation.

"I don't think there is any advantage to be gained by going into administration. When you take on creditors I believe you should pay them in full.

"It sheds a lot of debt but most of our debt is with the bank, therefore administration would not be successful if that's the right word as clubs like Leicester and Ipswich found when they dumped a huge amount of debt.

"Administration is not a route I intend taking and over my dead body will this company go into administration." He also vowed to tough it out and dismissed any idea of quitting.