SWINDON Town could learn their Sky Bet League Two fate in crunch talks today.

Clubs in English football’s third and fourth tiers are reportedly set to vote via a conference call on whether to abandon the 2019/20 season because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Town sit second in the table and on course for promotion with ten games remaining. They have not played for two months while the country has been locked down and will not return to training until May 25 at the earliest.

The vast majority of professional footballers in England are currently on furlough and it is thought the financial problems of staging matches behind closed doors will prompt most lower-league clubs to vote for an abandonment of the season.

It is not clear whether a decision on how promotion and relegation will follow today’s meeting, with points per game among the options EFL bosses will be considering as a solution if the campaign is scrapped.

Six League One clubs have collectively voiced their opposition to ending the season after Rochdale chief executive David Bottomley said the campaign had to be stopped now and decided on a points-per-game basis.

Bottomley’s comments brought a joint response from Fleetwood, Ipswich, Oldham, Peterborough, Portsmouth, and Sunderland, posted on social media by Peterborough owner Darragh MacAnthony.

“We as a collective are united in our goal to finish this season,” MacAnthony wrote. “We have no desire for voiding the season, PPG scenarios/letting a computer decide our footballing fate.”

EFL chairman Rick Parry has stated that integrity of competition would be the only reason to play out the 2019-20 season.

MacAntony’s post came hours after Bottomley told the PA news agency that time had effectively run out to complete the season by July 31, at which point “integrity goes out of the window” as out-of-contract players are allowed to leave.

“Our view now is that you have to end the season,” he told the PA news agency.

“The key date all along for the last five weeks has been May 18. If players could return to training then, there was a chance to conclude the season by the end of July, which is what the EFL wanted to do to avoid the issues of players out of contract.

“Even that was going to be difficult because a player’s contract ends at the end of June, but the case has always been that unless that player finds another club you have to pay them to the end of July. So the last four weeks is almost like a redundancy payment effectively.

“The word that has been bandied from the start by (EFL chairman) Rick Parry is integrity of the competition. I think integrity goes out the window on August 1 because all the players are gone.

“And how can football possibly, from a moral point of view, even consider returning to training and playing right now when we’re still not adequately testing people who have got much more importance in life, like NHS workers?”