Cobblers chairman Thomas confident play-offs will go ahead next month - and expects there to be home and away legs

Cobblers chairman Kelvin Thomas is 'relatively confident' that the League Two play-offs will go ahead as planned after clubs agreed to end the regular season but keep promotion last week.

An official vote is yet to take place but all 24 clubs were said to have been unanimous in their desire to curtail the campaign immediately and decide the final placings via a points-per-game method when they met for a conference call on Friday.

The decision will have to be ratified by the EFL and FA and much will also depend on what happens in League One, though it is expected that they will follow League Two and finish the season now but keep both promotion and relegation and play the play-offs on a points-per-game basis.

If that's the case, Tranmere Rovers, Bolton Wanderers and Southend United will drop down to League Two, replaced by Swindon Town, Plymouth Argyle, Crewe Alexandra and one other team, to be decided between Cheltenham, Exeter, Colchester and the Cobblers.

"I would say we're relatively confident that the play-offs will go ahead as agreed by League Two clubs on Friday," said Thomas.

"The EFL is a member organisation so our vote does count for quite a bit and all 24 clubs said that they would vote for there to be promotion with a play-off structure in place.

"The government and the virus will dictate what happens in the future but all the indications from the government is that we're starting up again as safely as is reasonable so it looks to be moving in that direction.

'We can't predict everything and we don't know what will happen in the future but we'll definitely have to move along relatively confidently."

Thomas also expected the play-offs to follow the traditional structure of home and away legs in the semi-finals before the final takes place at a neutral venue, though all matches will be played behind closed doors.

He added: "We don't know too many details yet because we've only had a brief conversation on Friday and the indicative view we gave was based on the principles of finishing the season and playing the play-offs.

"The overriding principle is to try and keep to the rules as much as possible so, based on that, I do expect there to be home and away legs with a neutral venue final."

It's too early to give an exact timescale as to when and how the play-offs would be played, though they will need to be completed before June 30.

"In terms of timing, it's normally between 10 days and two weeks to play the play-offs," continued Thomas. "Keith and the players would ideally like between two and three weeks to prepare themselves physically.

"That sort of timeframe is the general view of the club's inside the play-off positions and we also have the important deadline of June 30 so we want to try and get everything concluded by then due to the player contract issue.

"If we can get it done by then, it'll be beneficial to everyone so hopefully we can get more detail on that over the next week or so and we can really put plans in place."