By Jim Spence

A meeting will take place on Thursday evening which may very well ensure the survival of Dundee FC.

Appropriately, given the cold weather, it will take place at Dundee Ice Arena.

The inaugural meeting of the Dark Blue Business Trust has been organised by Peter Marr, club owner when they first went into administration in 2003.

The Trust will comprise business people who are sympathetic to the Dens Park club and hopes to raise enough to bring Dundee out of administration.

Eventually they also hope to buy Dens Park back from current owner John Bennett, who is an associate director at rivals Dundee United.

Bennett has been a good landlord and friend to the club and is a product of more innocent times, when many Dundonians regularly crossed the street on a weekly basis to watch both city teams.

Buying back the ancestral home, though, is a long way behind the immediate aims of the Trust as it fights to keep Dundee FC alive.

Their primary ambitions, according to Marr, are:

- to raise funds to ensure the survival and continuity of the club in a sustainable form

- to assist the club into a Company Voluntary Arrangement

- to provide funds for future cash flow

- to negotiate with the administrator to acquire a shareholding in the club

- and to gain a number of places on the board of the club.

The hope is that the business community can match the sterling work done by ordinary fans who have raised an astonishing £150,000 to date.

Marr, along with brother Jimmy, was in charge when the club went into administration for the first time seven years ago but he is positive that the club can again emerge from its current situation and preserve its 117-year history.

Dundee have been skating on thin ice for some time.

Thursday night's meeting at the "Rink", as it's known in Dundee, could decide whether the club falls through that ice, or skates its way to a bright new future.

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