HEROES and villains - how fitting that an old Beach Boys standard should reflect the washed-up feeling which has overwhelmed York City like the torrential tide of a tsunami.

A full fortnight before the historic 2003-04 campaign was due to end the Minstermen's hold on cherished Football League status has been fatally loosened. Mathematical miracles? Come off it. York City would have to sign Albert Einstein, John Nash and Stephen Hawking and hoped they added goal-grabbing talents to their respective scientific genius.

No, it's all over. Quaking hands have slipped, fortunes flipped and City have now dipped into waters above which they may struggle to hold their heads.

After 75 years of being among the 92-Club - the largest clan of professional Football League clubs in any one country in the whole wide world - York City have crashed down-market into the Conference.

And to all the apologists and pundits who might trill and twitter that the Conference is a beacon of competitive light, it does not hold a single candle to where the Minstermen have resided for these last three-score years and 15.

The basement division of the Football League is hardly the stuff of green-field dreaming for any football fan. But when the alternative pitches your side, your club, your one and only team to the likes of Tamworth, Margate, Accrington Stanley, Burton Albion and Canvey Island for Chrissakes, then Division Three has all the allure of that elite hinterland of goals and greed, the Champions League.

Hurrahs of derbies against Halifax Town to the west and Scarborough to the east harbour an intensely hollow ring when all you have known is the combat of the Football League.

The initial reaction is to find the scapegoat, who to censure in all this mess, who to lob the first stone of criticism at.

The usual - and obvious - suspects are there in the defensive wall of shame. Douglas Craig, the ground-shaking Bootham Crescent Holdings, John Batchelor. All can attest to Yuletide pantomime villain status even as we swing into spring. None are wholly exempt from condemnation.

Then there are the elected representatives. The men of the Council, the burgers of bluster, the hams of sham. No sooner is the fate of the Minstermen sealed then there they are bleating the platitudes of politics amid a torrent of crocodile tears.

But this time there are bigger ne'er-do-wells, a more blameworthy battalion. They are the very men who have donned the red shirt at home, the sky blue shirt away. The players.

I do not include the ranks of rookies, who have defied tender years and given their all to a fight fatally loaded against them. BBC pundit Alan Hansen once famously said 'you can't win anything with kids'. He might have been wrong, but you can never win a relegation dog-fight with barely tested young-bloods.

It's the senior players who have blatantly let York City down.

They have singularly failed a manager in Chris Brass, who has been passion personified. They have disappointed the youngsters who will have looked up to them. They have not served themselves well, and, most criminally, they have betrayed supporters who not once, not twice, but several times have dug deeper than miners to rescue the club from oblivion.

If you need heroes in this wretched campaign look no further than the manager. If half of the players replicated his commitment City would have the Premiership, not the part-time arena in their sights.

And just as commendable are fans, whose loyalty has been second to none and who have deserved so much more for the immense support they have given.

In the past City have flirted with the spectre of relegation. But they never gave up the ghost like the senior ranks of a season that will go down as the worst ever in the history of a proud club. From a position of respectability in tenth place, the modern Minstermen collected four points from a possible 54. That's downright scandalous.

Updated: 09:48 Tuesday, April 27, 2004