THE exit of the dismal Terry Dolan and his dreadful sidekick Adie Shaw is the best news I've heard in ages - in fact, the best news since the Supporters' Trust took over the club.

Dolan was not only the luckiest manager City have ever had, but also one of the worst (yes, he's right down there with Wilf McGuinness, Bobby Saxton and Neil Thompson).

Don't be fooled by media claims that it was Dolan who saved City from closure, it was the players - led by the admirable Chris Brass - who were the real heroes during the darkest days of last season.

If you read David Stanford's generally excellent article in Saturday's Evening Press carefully, the following sentences stand out:

"Dolan, a Douglas Craig appointment, was very much born of a time when the manager was strictly subordinate to the chairman and the board of directors. It was a deferential relationship that the City chief was happy and comfortable with.

"However, the Supporters' Trust takeover heralded sweeping changes. Dolan was now taking his orders from the fans, an alien concept he may have struggled to embrace."

In other words Dolan, with a supreme if utterly misplaced confidence in his own ability, could not bear to take orders from the fans - because he thought he knew better. Well, he patently didn't.

In his first full season at Bootham Crescent, he very nearly took City out of the League together, and although there was an improvement last season, Dolan's record was ultimately very poor. So, too, was most of the football his team played.

It must have been heart-breaking for youth coaches Paul Stancliffe and Brian Neaves to see their promising youngsters cast aside so cruelly, while inferior journeymen clogged up the first team.

Yes, the Board needed to save money too, but had Dolan been half as good as he thought he was, he would have been kept on. After all, it isn't cheap honouring his (or Shaw's) contract for the next 12 months.

Now it's time for a new era.. and I, for one, can't wait.

Robert Beaumont

Minskip Lodge,

Minskip,

near Boroughbridge.

Updated: 11:10 Monday, June 02, 2003