Oxford United have written to the Football Conference over their registration policy which saw them docked five points earlier this season – and could cost them a place in the Blue Square Premier play-offs.

The club, one of four along with Crawley Town, Mansfield Town and Bognor Regis who had points deducted for fielding unregistered players, say they are disappointed in the findings of the Conference Review Sub-Committee and the subsequent statement from the Football Conference.

It follows fierce criticism of the Conference’s registration policies from clubs and supporters groups.

United issued a statement last night, which read: "Having discussed the report and considered our reaction we are writing to the Conference with a series of questions that we feel need to be answered in light of the findings.

"We have released our response into the public domain to ensure that it is clear that there is no inference of personal attack on any of the Conference staff. Our criticism is not of the administrative staff, but with the procedures within the office.

"It is also worth noting that we fully accept our responsibility in the registering of the players and have altered and strengthened our procedures to prevent this from happening again.

"We have been told that the Football Conference have also changed their procedures, but their statement does not indicate that. Therefore we are just looking for simple answers to our questions so that the procedure is made clear for all clubs in the future.

"In the interests of clarity and transparency of the league we are looking for answers to the following questions: * What are the current procedures for checking team sheets after a fixture has been played?

* Has this procedure changed at any point during the current season?

* Has this procedure changed at any point during the last three years?

* Can the Conference indicate which other leagues perform random checks on team sheets?

* If random checks were performed, can the Conference highlight how they were administered and also how the league ensured that this was a fair system?

* Were the findings of the Review Sub-Committee forwarded to all board members before the statement was made?

* Will there be any further discussion at board level about the findings?

* If the Conference are confident of the current and historical procedures, would they welcome and allow an independent review of both?

We look forward to the responses."

The Conference's own internal review into their heavily criticised procedures could find "nothing wrong" and has been described by United chairman Kelvin Thomas as "a whitewash".

Conference chairman Brian Lee said at the weekend it was up to clubs to ensure their players were correctly registered, that staff at the Conference had been "unfairly criticised" and that there had been "unwarranted abuse" from supporters' trusts.

United were deducted five points by a disciplinary review panel in Birmingham in January for not registering midfielder Eddie Hutchinson properly, or checking that he had been registered.