GENEROUS Dean Court stars have handed the club's Cherryshare campaign a timely boost by organising a whip-round to help swell the coffers.

Sean O'Driscoll's squad have acted quickly to lead the way after Cherries chairman Peter Phillips admitted the fundraising scheme has "lost some impetus".

And Phillips is concerned that unless the campaign can raise around £450,000 before the end of the year, the club is likely to face an uncertain future.

He said: "We have made great progress in improving the finances of the club over the past three months.

"Now we are just £450,000 short of safety but that is still a huge sum and unless we can raise something like that amount before the end of the year, the risk of administration or worse still hangs over our heads.

"We have close to 1,500 fans who have signed up for the campaign which is great backing from the grassroots supporters of our club and will take us another very important step down the road to becoming a truly supporter owned community club.

"However, since announcing that the stadium sale was off, we have lost some impetus and our telephone campaign is not going as well as we hoped.

"We need to regain the sense of urgency and make sure we raise that final £450,000. I particularly hope we can now persuade more of our better off fans to get involved.

"The incentives are excellent and if we could find just 50 more people to put in £10,000 we would be home and dry. That is our challenge for the next few weeks."

Phillips added: "There are many reasons for our progress so far. Firstly the team are doing well and match day attendances have grown from around 4,000 at the start of the season to almost 6,000 home supporters at each of our last two games. This also helps other match day incomes.

"Under Abdul Jaffer's leadership, the commercial team are now achieving remarkable success. Shop sales this season have already exceeded sales in the whole of last year and groundboard sales income is also already double the whole of last year."

Wade Elliott, Cherries' PFA representative said: "The idea of a whip-round was mooted a couple of weeks ago.

"The players have seen the efforts that the fans have made so far, the letters that have been sent in and the pledges that have been made. And we just wanted to show we appreciate all the efforts the fans and people at the club are making to make sure the club has a future.

"Since I've been here the club has always been very close to the community and the people around it and hopefully this scheme will lead to us forging even closer links to our fans than at a lot of other clubs.

"Hopefully this collection will show that we are not just mercenaries and will encourage people to join in what is a really good scheme."

For more information on how to invest in Cherryshare contact the club on 01202 726312 or write to Cherryshare, Dean Court, Bournemouth, BH7 7AF.