THE Club yesterday attended the Football Conference AGM held at the Hilton Hotel in Blackpool and were warmly welcomed to the Blue Square Premier by both fellow clubs and officials of the league.

Ironically, we are still members of The Football League for a few more days, as the League's own AGM does not start until Monday in Portugal, when we will then officially make the switch to the Conference.

The Football League were also good enough to invite one of the club's directors over to their AGM to wish us the best of luck in our new division.

While there are still a number of decisions to be made before the make-up of the three Blue Square divisions is complete, Halifax Town for one have appealed at the decision to demote them two levels after going into Administration and this will be heard on Wednesday, the Conference pushed ahead with the AGM and preparations for next season.

While we worked under a 'Salary Cap' in League 2 and the Conference operated a similar 'Approved Playing Budget', it now looks likely that in 2008/09 the Blue Square Premier clubs will instead have a different 'Financial Protocol' to work with instead.

In the last week Nuneaton Borough have entered Administration and while Boston United have exited their CVA, it came after the Conference deadline of the second Saturday in May - so both clubs could find themselves demoted.

The idea of this new Protocol would be to be flag up financial problems at an earlier stage and therefore help clubs before debts grew too great.

There will also be fewer Blue Square Premier games shown on Setanta next season, with the number likely to drop from over 70 to about 52 live matches.

The television company suggested that the original number they went with last season was too many and caused all sorts of fixture and scheduling problems for both parties.

Mind you, 52 games is still a large commitment and Setanta are looking at increasing the quality of their shows, as the directors of the company were delighted with their viewing figures, which at times were better than for some of the Scottish Premier matches they also featured.

Last night's Conference Gala Dinner was recorded by Setanta and will be aired this coming Friday evening.