A MIXTURE of relief and empathy at Bootham Crescent will have greeted Wrexham's failure this week to reverse their ten-point deduction as a punishment for going into administration.

On the one hand, York City's current perilous position two points and one place above the Conference drop zone means the implications of this week's decision by an independent panel in London for relegation rivals Northwich Victoria are grave.

While Minstermen supporters, especially considering the club's recent history, will be reluctant to profit from another side's misfortune, the panel's ruling now appears to finally quell fears that second-bottom Northwich would be given back the ten points they lost for calling in the administrators earlier this season.

Without that deduction, Northwich would now be above City on goal difference and Viv Busby's men would instead be in the relegation zone.

But on the other hand, should City capitalise on Wrexham's plight come the end of the season, there will be a cruel irony as there are massive parallels between the two clubs' off-field traumas of recent years.

Amazingly, following former chairman Douglas Craig's transferral of ownership of Bootham Crescent to Bootham Crescent Holdings, football's governing bodies never implemented a ruling to prevent such a fate befalling another club in the future.

Since then, Wrexham, who like City once caused a massive FA Cup shock by beating the might of Arsenal, have seen their ground fall into the hands of former chairman Alex Hamilton.

The Racecourse Ground's new landlord then rejected a series of reasonable offers to acquire his ownership of the football club, seemingly unperturbed when administration became a reality, and those were the "exceptional circumstances" Wrexham's two administrators and barristers were relying on, in vain, to overturn the club's harsh retribution.

Unlike Craig, Hamilton, who has spent the last month on holiday in Spain, has yet to name a price for which he would be prepared to sell the ground back to the club.

But Wrexham have already wasted £20,000 on an ill-fated appeal which, in itself, seems unfairly prohibitive.

Fortunately, the North Wales club were donated half of the costs by a local business.

Should City fans feel any further cause for sympathy then Denis Smith, the architect of the Minstermen's FA Cup triumph against Arsenal and manager of the record-breaking Division Four championship-winning team, is currently in charge of Wrexham and vows to keep the team up without their lost ten points.

Wrexham must finish outside the bottom four in League One to avoid the drop while City need to avoid the last three positions.

Some confusion has surrounded relegation from the Conference this season but the bottom line is that the three lowest teams will be replaced by teams from the Conference North and South.

The champions from both feeder divisions will automatically go up with the second-to-fifth placed teams then playing off with each other for the right to take part in a Conference North v Conference South final for the last promotion place.

And should, for example, three northern-based teams be relegated from the Conference then the three most southerly Conference North clubs would swap divisions for next season.

Updated: 11:25 Saturday, January 08, 2005