Lack of funds leaves Stingrays out in the cold

It ends four years of top-flight hockey for the club and leaves the league with a huge fixture headache with less than a month until the opening weekend of the season.

The news is a blow to league bosses, who had only recently secured a return to a 10-strong division with the addition of the Dundee Stars and the newly-formed Braehead Clan.

Only last month Pack informed fans at a specially-arranged forum that finding funding to help the club through another Elite League season at Hull Arena would be difficult, revealing that last season he and his wife Sue pumped in 150,000 of their own money just to keep the club going.

Already hampered by the loss of their main sponsor for the 2010-11 campaign, the club needed to bring in a large amount of additonal sponsorship to see them through until next April. It's clear that has not been achieved, despite the best efforts of the Packs, who ware believed to have been making calls to potential sponsors until late on Tuesday.

"Despite our best efforts, we regret to confirm that the Stingrays will be unable to take up the place in the Elite League that we had hoped to," said Pack.

"We have been working tirelessly over the past few weeks until as late as possible to try and get the funding in place to sustain another season of hockey in Hull But, unfortunately, it's not been possible."

The club will hold a press conference at Hull Arena later today (Wednesday, 1pm) where further details about the current financial situation and a more detailed explanation of the reasons behind the decision to call it a day are expected to be given. A fans' forum will follow later in the evening.

Player-coach Sylvain Cloutier - who proved popular in his first season in charge last year - was informed of the news late on Tuesday night at his home in Canada.

All 15 players on the Stingrays' roster were also informed, leaving them - in particular the British players - just a few weeks to try and find themselves a new club.