Portsmouth's League One rivals Gillingham's survival fears amid coronavirus pandemic

The Priestfield supremo admits the Gills are already starting to become cash strapped with elite football suspended until April 3 and potentially beyond.

The government yesterday announced to set aside £330bn to help small businesses deal with the crisis.

Pompey chief executive Mark Catlin recently said the club would be able to to withstand a period of financial instability.

It’s a precarious time for many sides in the third and fourth tier, however, with many running on a hand-to-mouth basis. The EFL are currently meeting today to organise a response

In order to get through the difficult period, Scally feels top-flight sides should help out clubs in the lower echelons of the professional game.

He told Sky Sports News: ‘Assuming we can come to an arrangement with HMRC, not so much defer payments but have a holiday of not paying any HMRC payments for the next three months we can then use that money to keep the staff going.

'Obviously staff will have to come to arrangements with their own mortgage companies, banks or car loan companies to maybe have a holiday of three months of not paying payments there.

'So, if we can give enough money that staff can buy essentials like food, put petrol in their cars so that they can get around and look after their families then I think we can probably last two or three months.

'After that the cash we do have will run out and I don't have any solution past two or three months.

‘We’re a family of football, the football pyramid is very important to everyone.

‘Clearly League One and League Two are different to Premier League clubs and even Championship clubs.

‘We don’t have any clubs with wealthy belly factors in League One and League Two, we live from hand to mouth every week.

‘The impact financially if this goes on for a month or so will be significant.

‘We're grateful for the government announcement yesterday, but clubs taking on debt doesn’t solve the problem as we have to repay that debt. It just passes the problem further down.

‘I would urge the Premier League to look at its clubs. It would cost £2.5m a club. A contribution toward the fund, £40m-50m shared between 47 clubs between League One and Two will get them through the next few months. It could be the difference between salvation and not salvation.’