TOWN'S financial woes over a three-year period were laid bare to shareholders this morning.

Accounts from season 1998-99 to 2000-1 dropped through letter-boxes this morning ahead of the annual general meeting on December 28 at the County Ground.

The losses sustained during each year do not make for happy reading, with £1million-plus deficits on each occasion.

The current board has long stated that piecing together the accounts has been a time-consuming, difficult task.

In a letter to shareholders, chairman Willie Carson said: "I recognise that at the last annual general meeting your board announced that an extra ordinary general meeting would be held during the course of 2003 to deal with this outstanding matter.

"However, because we had to virtually reconstruct the entire accounts, it took considerably longer than first envisaged."

In all three years the auditors claim not to have 'obtained all the information and explanations that we considered necessary' for the purpose of the audit and 'were unable to determine whether proper accounting records' had been maintained.

In 1999 the loss for the financial year was £2,210,587, although by the end of 2001 this had dropped to £1,012,188.

While the losses for the financial year are heading in the right direction, the amount owed to creditors has remained static over the four years in 1998 it was £6.1 million, and in 2001 it had risen to £7.3million.

However, loans from shareholders jumped from £40,000 in 2000 to £1.7million a year later.

Wages and salaries have remained fairly static. In 1998 the figure was almost £3 million and had fallen to almost £2.5 million in 2001.

The accounts for 2001-2 and 2002-3 remain outstanding.

Earlier this month, chief executive Mark Devlin said the annual general meeting would provide shareholders with the opportunity to examine past accounts, but the current board's mission was to build a brighter future for the club and not to wallow in the past.

This year's AGM will start at 11 am.

KEITH O'Halloran was sent off for retaliation during the reserves' 3-0 defeat at their Oxford United counterparts last night.

The midfielder was sent off just before half-time after reacting angrily to an elbow.

The Town team were also met with abuse after the game at Oxford City's ground, and player-manager Alan Reeves said: "It was pretty sad to see grown men, not kids, shouting like that at a reserve match. Still, our boys did well to laugh it off."