Five of the Oxfordshire Lawn Tennis Association's leading committee members have sensationally resigned after a major disagreement.

The row erupted at the county's AGM, when long-standing secretary Mary Evans queried the accounts which had been drawn up by treasurer Edwin Antill.

And it led to chairman Philip Candy, marketing and sponsorship officer Mac Bailey and Antill all handing in their resignations, quickly followed by vice-chairman Andrew Parsons and president John Harrop.

Evans said that her actions were made in the interests of the future of Oxfordshire tennis.

"I could not put my name to the accounts the way they were - they were simply not right," she said.

"The LTA require us to spend and account for their money in detail, and this was not done. The LTA provide 75 per cent of our funding and although the OLTA can, in theory, do what it likes, it risks losing LTA funding in the future and I was just doing my job as far as I was concerned.

"It is difficult to challenge what someone has put in the accounts if you are not trained - which I'm not - but I went through everything and knew exactly what we had spent and saw things had been put under different titles, and the LTA would not have accepted this.

"I think the crunch of the matter is getting the balance between the interests of tennis and business, and I felt it was going more towards business.

"I don't dispute that we had differences of opinion about other things, but we had always sorted them out."

Antill was reluctant to comment, but said: "All I am prepared to say is that when you have a situation when there are a load of volunteers, you have to work together. However, I do not think that in the end, the accounts led to all this."

Harrop, who has been on the committee for 40 years, said: "I didn't want to resign, but did not want to pick up the pieces again. We have made a loss for the last five years, but this year, we made about £15,000."