What's it like being a professional footballer cast adrift by your club? CHRIS TITLEY talks to two players recently released by York City.

TOM Cowan has enjoyed major highs in 15 years of professional football. He has played in the world's greatest derby fixture, the Old Firm clash between Rangers and Celtic, collecting a championship winner's medal with Rangers in one unforgettable season.

During his time in the English Premier League, he regularly ran out in front of 30,000-strong crowds, pitting his defensive skills against some truly great strikers.

But if those were the highs, today is a definite low. His last York City pay cheque arrives in July. After that, who knows? He was one of eight players released as the club strives to balance the books, and has yet to find another to join.

With a wife and young family to support it is a nerve-wracking time. At 32, Tom has more to give on the pitch, but with so many other players released by lower division clubs, finding a new team will not be easy.

It would be an ignominious end to an excellent playing career.

Like most boys, Tom wanted to be a professional footballer. But he had talent.

Born in Bothwell, south of Glasgow, he first impressed in the school side, before playing for Scottish First Division club Clyde's youth team. At the same time he completed an electrical apprenticeship at British Steel.

He was destined never to become a sparky. By the age of 19, Tom was being pursued by some of the biggest names in football.

He met with Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough. "He was funny," Tom recalled. "He couldn't come to the ground 'because it was raining'.

"I met him at his house. The first thing he said to me was 'get your f-ing coat off in my house fella'."

Clough failed to clinch the young footballer's signature, despite an offer to send chocolates to his mum. Tom also turned down Terry Venables, who tried to bring him to Spurs.

He wasn't ready to go down to London, he said. At this time, football wasn't run by agents. For advice, "you had your mates and your mum and dad".

Back at the steelworks he was told there had been a call out on BBC radio for him to return home. Walter Smith, deputy to Rangers' manager Graeme Souness, had been in touch.

Tom met with Souness, "an idol of mine", signed up, and left the steel industry for ever.

Rangers then included England internationals Terry Butcher and Ray Wilkins, and Scots' favourite Ally McCoist: it was a terrific football education.

Tom played about 15 games for the first team in his two-and-a-half year stint with Rangers, including European clashes with Bayern Munich and Red Star Belgrade.

More top flight football followed, with three years at Sheffield United in the English Premier League. Then came spells with Huddersfield - "the happiest time of my playing career" - and Burnley.

He was less settled at Cambridge United, and when York City boss Terry Dolan, whom he had known as reserve team coach at Huddersfield, offered him a place with the Minstermen, he grabbed it.

But what a time to join, with York City fighting extinction. "It's been the most stressful season of my career," he admits. "And it ended with me being released, which wasn't very good, considering the season I'd had."

Not for the first time, he has departed a club without so much as a card, let alone a leaving do.

Footballers' careers are inevitably short, and Tom had started to prepare for life after the game by studying for a journalism qualification. But that will take another year to complete.

He is married to Della, and has two daughters, aged three and four. He has bills to pay. It is a bad time to be in limbo.

"It does really matter whether I get a club or not," says Tom. "It's terrible. I just don't know whether I'm going to get paid after the end of July. You keep your fingers crossed and hope by mid-June something's happening."

He has sent his CV off to 60 clubs, but is yet to gain a positive response. And his agent is also pushing his case. But he knows he's up against it.

"There's about a thousand, or maybe slightly fewer, players out of work. It's the same thing: clubs are cutting back."

He has a coaching badge, but coaching jobs are harder to come by than playing opportunities.

Unsurprisingly, Tom is rueful about the growing gulf between football's Premiership super-rich and the smaller, poorer clubs. "Everyone seems to think football's glamorous. They don't realise that in the lower leagues, stress levels are so high.

"Basically, I'm sitting waiting for the phone to ring."

In contrast to Tom, Craig Wilding is at the start of his playing career. Having served a three-year apprenticeship at Chesterfield, another club to be rescued from administration by a supporters' trust, he was let go to ease the club's financial headaches.

Now history has repeated itself at York City. After being released by City at the end of the season, the 21-year-old striker has left York for his family home in Birmingham, where he is working to keep his fitness levels - and spirits - high.

He enjoyed his year with the Minstermen despite the off-pitch problems. "It was character-building," says Craig, although he talks of his frustration at being kept out of the first team because it performed so well: he featured in ten games last season, with two starts.

Craig was surprised and disappointed to read on Teletext that he was out, but believes York's cost-cutting is symptomatic of football's wider problems.

"The game is in a terrible state at the moment," he says. "Everyone thinks it's all glamour. No one thinks about the other side of it."

While taking a break from a gym workout, he told me he is pinning his hopes on being re-signed by City in time for next season. So how does he cope with the uncertainty?

"You get yourself fit, you get yourself right in case the worst comes to the worst: in case you need to go to other clubs."

He has the indefatigable optimism of youth. Despite his own experience, footballers "have got a brilliant lifestyle", he says. "Compared with years ago there's not as much money being splashed around. But I would encourage anyone wanting to go into the game.

"I wouldn't change it for the world."

Updated: 11:12 Wednesday, May 28, 2003