Former York City chairman John Batchelor has revealed he made a substantial cash offer of help 12 weeks ago in exchange for a seat on the board - but was turned down.

As reported in yesterday's Evening Press, Batchelor has refused to hand over £42,500 of an agreed £85,000 after a confidentiality clause was broken by current chairman Steve Beck on a national radio interview.

But Batchelor has now said he had tried to patch things up with an offer to repay the owed money and add a significant amount more to club funds for a seat on the board and ten per cent of the shares in return.

The former chairman met with City managing director Jason McGill and finance director Terry Doyle in April and offered them access to the combined marketing and promotions budgets of several companies he is connected with, which he claims boast a combined annual turnover in excess of £35million, on the condition that he could sit on the board to have some say in how the money was spent.

But the Supporters' Trust board deemed the conditions unacceptable and Batchelor decided to reveal his offer after reading the statement made by the club in yesterday's Evening Press.

He said: "They had an opportunity to get their hands on the marketing budget of a £35million turnover group and turned it down. I think they would have found it difficult to accept, but what do they want? Do they want the future of the club?

"I would have mentioned it before but there has been a degree of legal exchanges and since the club have gone public with their statement I wanted to (a) have the opportunity to say something in my defence and (b) there is still the possibility of discussion.

"All I wanted was a seat on the board and a small shareholding and I don't think I was asking for an awful lot. I'm not asking for total power."

The cash available to the club could have been as much as £200,000 according to Batchelor, who said the directorship would have given him some say over what happened to it, and added that the offer still stands.

He added: "There's a degree of animosity between a lot of the fans and myself. I think that is something the current board didn't want to face because it's a supporters' owned club now.

"They don't want to turn around to them and say 'this guy didn't do terribly well before but things are okay now'.

"I think it's pride and it's egos and it's all those things. I'm not a complete and utter moron and I could have helped them."

Batchelor also ruled out payment of the remaining 'owed' cash as a goodwill gesture.

"It's very difficult to consider to do something out of goodwill when for the last two years I have been subjected to abusive phone calls from irate fans and also to my employees.

"To offer the money out of goodwill is like saying to someone 'I'm going to let you poke me in the eye all day and then I'll take you to dinner'."

York City confirmed the offer had been made and McGill said: "In an attempt to resolve matters amicably Terry Doyle and myself met with John Batchelor on April 5.

"He asked us to put an offer to the Trust Board to indicate he would overlook any breaches and make payment of the £42,500 in full only if he was allowed a new shareholding and directorship of the Football Club.

"After proper discussion with the Supporters' Trust, the board informed Mr Batchelor that these new additional conditions for payment were unacceptable."

Updated: 10:59 Thursday, July 08, 2004