Eastbourne Borough face one of the biggest fixtures in their history tomorrow when club officials meet the council to fight a proposed 400 per cent rent increase for Priory Lane.

Chairman Len Smith is confident he can convince the council to backtrack on plans after more than 1,000 Borough fans signed a petition protesting at the huge rise.

Smith claims such a massive increase - which does not just affect the football club - is completely unfair and would seriously affect the work the club does within the community.

Smith said: "We have had a number of meetings with the council to put across our point of view and I think they are coming around.

"When we first moved to Priory Lane the original agreement made it clear that any improvements we made to the ground would be ignored when calculating the rent in the future.

"That means we should be paying rent on 11 acres of grazing land but there has obviously been a misunderstanding somewhere along the way because the council officials now were not around 25 years ago.

"I cannot honestly believe they will stick with their original plan for the rent because if they did it would not be the first team that suffered but the junior teams and community projects we run."

If the matter is not resolved tomorrow it could go to arbitration.