LEAGUE OF IRELAND PREMIER DIVISION:CORK CITY owner Tom Coughlan insisted he would keep fighting this week to save the club from liquidation but the Revenue Commissioners appear to have dealt the League of Ireland outfit's hopes of survival a major blow by insisting yesterday that all of the €439,658 owed is paid in one go.

“It’s now all of the money by Friday, there is no four months,” the Corkman told local radio station 96 FM yesterday.

“We have to come up with all of the money and we’re working hard to do that. But it’s a substantial amount of money and we’re up against it. I’m not so sure we’ll get there at this stage to be honest.”

Coughlan spent yesterday talking to the FAI, the Revenue Commissioners and looking at ways in which the additional €330,000 required by Friday’s return to court might be raised.

This morning, the PFAI’s representatives will be in Cork to meet him and members of the squad and the FAI say they will continue to monitor the situation but with the Revenue apparently intent on making an example of the club, the prospects of a reprieve look increasingly remote.

City’s handling of its tax situation in recent months certainly hasn’t done them any favours with the authorities but the current problems appear to stem at least in part from Coughlan’s willingness to meet all of the arrears due to squad members in the wake of last year’s examinership.

His position is that he believed the settlement with the Revenue Commissioners under the terms of the examinership was final and he did not realise by paying the players their back money, (which was paid, as is customary at many League of Ireland clubs, net of tax) he was creating a new liability for the pre-examinership period.

“Our argument then was that that was a payment that was due under examinership and shouldn’t fall as part of current tax liabilities,” he says.

“That was an argument that they weren’t prepared to listen to. We now accept that as the position.”

In the months since, the club has fallen further and further into arrears and a failure to engage more constructively with the authorities at an early stage may have cost them a significant amount of the goodwill that can prove critical in these situations.

“I think what happened to Cork was the man who took them over was too honest,” says manager Paul Doolin, who has been through something similar to all this already with Drogheda United and who is scathing about the wage levels and bonus structure that prevailed at City prior to the examinership last year.

“He gave them (the players) back what they were owed. We got a percentage of our wages at Drogheda and they should have been told: ‘Listen boys, this is the way it is, we might give you your wages back, or a percentage back, but you’ve a job going forward.’ But instead everything was paid – every single penny. Of course that was a mistake. Think about it.”

Whatever might have been done by Coughlan then, the reality now is the club is running out of time and its owner is left questioning whether a club like City can ever be viable when the wages required to compete in the league are so high and the levels of support are routinely so modest in comparison to other major sports played in the city.

“I have invested around €700,000. It’s costing more on a weekly basis than is coming in. An average gate isn’t €20,000 and then there are the rest of the costs based around a match night. That’s the same with any business; I’m not looking for any special favours.

“There was one period when Dave Barry was in charge that wages were under control. We’ve come off an economic boom and we’ve inherited high expectations. The wages are still pretty high but everyone has been very reasonable. It’s just that the Revenue haven’t budged, 3,200 turned up for the Ipswich Town friendly, the stadium can hold 7,800,” he continues.

“You have to ask yourself . . . I think the league as a whole has issues, I’m not so sure summer soccer is working. There are structural issues that are wrong.

“But we could spend all day talking about it; my obligation is to get us out of this hole.”

Coughlan, like the league itself, insists he is planning at present on the basis that Friday night’s game against Bray Wanderers will go ahead but there was no great conviction at Abbotstown yesterday that it will, simply an insistence if City hit the buffers on Friday then that will be dealt with at the time.

“We can deal with that situation if it arises,” said league director Fran Gavin.

“We didn’t think we’d be here at a Setanta Cup draw a few weeks ago but we are.

“There are over 40 jobs at the club and those guys all have families and we are concerned for all those people.

“The bottom line, though, is that the people who run clubs are responsible for the decisions they make . . . that’s the law.”