Clouds over Bootham

The skipper...

CHRIS Brass usually sees the glass as half full, but his recent run of bad luck would be enough to test the most die-hard optimist. When he signed for York City in March 2001, then chairman Douglas Craig assured him that the club was in the black and on the up. Chris was sure a team was being built with the right mix of youth and experience to be "in the shake-up for promotion".

Later that year Mr Craig put the club on the market and said it would close if a buyer was not found quickly.

City was saved and the team, led by Captain Chris, put together an impressive run of results. When John Batchelor stepped in to take over the club, "it seemed to be a new dawn," the skipper said.

It was a false dawn. Two months ago they were told the club was in trouble again and they weren't getting paid.

To cap it all, Chris fractured his cheekbone in December. It has healed in time for him to play on Saturday - which could be the last game before the club is wound up.

If City cannot be saved again, Chris and the other lads must find other clubs. No easy task in the cash-strapped lower divisions of the national game where too many professional players are already out of work.

Chris Brass has made a living at football for more than a decade. He's no millionaire, though.

"Everybody believes you have this wonderful lifestyle," he said. "But people forget that we don't earn the thousands of pounds that are bandied about, quite rightly I still think, to Premiership players."

Chris is married to Kim. Their first child, Evie, was born last June. They have "a nice home and I have a car, and my wife has a car" but all that came under threat when the pay cheques stopped.

"We're like everybody else. We live to our means. Ask anybody in employment - to suddenly not have two months' pay, it's going to cause problems.

"It's been a case of having to cut back on a lot of things. We have just gone through Christmas. You want to go out and spoil people, especially your loved ones. But you can't have any of the luxuries you're used to."

The worst thing is the uncertainty, Chris said. "It's very difficult for Kim, because I can't give her any answers." Planning ahead, whether for the summer holidays or for Evie's education, is impossible.

The depth of this crisis has led him to think the unthinkable. "Losing your house is something you will have to consider if you don't have any club and this one no longer exists."

Looking for a non-football job is a daunting notion. "We are not really skilled in any other area. To go out into the normal work environment would be quite difficult for any of us. Football is a totally different prospect."

When he began in the game, he was sent on youth training scheme courses. "Ten years down the line, going in as an office junior at 27, it would be quite degrading.

"I will have to be prepared to do something like that. If it's the worst case scenario you have to be real. Sometimes as footballers you aren't always in the real world."

Whether he finds another job in football or not, if York City folds he will always regret it. He feels the job he came to do here is only half finished.

"The players that are here are very, very able players capable of playing at a much higher level. The thought there will be so much talent going to waste because of everything that could happen, it would be a travesty of football."

The players have responded to the crisis with impressive unity. But "since the administration happened, people became tetchy. We are all on edge".

The 27-year-old captain has tried to offer a lead to the younger players. "It's difficult to give the players a lift because there is nothing positive to give. You can keep saying to them, 'we have got to do it on the pitch', but the players are just genuinely concerned."

Is he bitter? "I have lost my trust," he says. His own good faith has been betrayed.

"There isn't an awful lot of loyalty now in football, but I have always believed when you sign for somebody you put your heart and soul into that club."

Chris won't single anyone out for blame. Once you start pointing the finger, "you have stopped fighting".

Instead he praises the hardcore York City support. "It's nice to know you have that passionate feeling. Without that hardcore the club would have died a long time ago."

Despite the problems, he still loves football. "Sometimes it's like when you are in love with a person: you don't always like them, you will always love them. That's how I feel. I'm still in love with the game. I just don't like it at the moment."

The fans...

SO many memories. Wembley in 1993, of course. Arsenal in 1985. Becoming the first club to amass 100 points in a season when they won promotion in 1983/84. Going to Old Trafford in 1995 and winning 3-0 in the Coca Cola Cup.

And then, says George Rowe, there were all those countless home games down the years spent watching City from the commentary box, where he was the match day announcer.

"It must be the worst view of anybody in the ground," he says. "You're right next to the ground control box, and if the weather is bad or cold, it gets full of police. I'm spending half my time banging on for them to sit down so I can see what's going on. I often didn't know who had scored a goal until I heard Barry Parker the BBC Radio North Yorkshire commentator on the radio."

Yet it's all part of the magic. George and his wife Kath have seen every York City match - league and cup, even pre-season friendlies - for more than 16 years. Every match since September 20, 1986. "Home game against Bury, we won 1-0," says George.

Not all have been good games: but that's not the point. "We've sat out there when it has been raining sometimes, and they have played rubbish and lost 4-0," says Kath. "We went to Torquay on Saturday and the game was rubbish. But you're still there no matter what happens. The game becomes part of your life."

For the past 16 years, George reckons he's driven an average of 10,000 miles a year following the Minstermen to away games. That's about 160,000 miles, or the equivalent of driving round the world nearly seven times.

"We've made them into our holidays," he says. "If it wasn't for the football, we wouldn't have visited such exotic places as Rochdale and Halifax!"

So if the club does fold at the weekend - a prospect neither Kath nor George can really bear to think about - it will leave a gaping hole in their lives. "I would just be devastated," says Kath. "The weekends would just be empty - Saturdays, anyway."

"I couldn't just say York City has finished, so from tomorrow I'm going to go and follow Scarborough or Barnsley," adds George. "Maybe the odd match here and there, but I could never give all this time to one club again. I don't mind driving 600 miles in a weekend to go to Torquay to watch City, but I don't like the idea of travelling to a team we've no allegiance to."

Part of what makes supporting a small club such as City so special is the sense of belonging, he says. George has been a York supporter since he moved here in 1960 and married Kath. He was brought up in London's East End, and as a lad supported Tottenham Hotspur. He still does: but top-level football is different now.

"I've been watching football since 1945," he says. "I used to go to White Hart Lane, and buy an apple for a penny off Ted Ditchburn, and then watch him play in goal. His parents used to run a greengrocer's down the road and he worked there on Saturday morning and then went and played. You try doing something like that now at Manchester United.

"Top level football now is so impersonal. But here, I can go to a match at whichever end of the country and I'm watching players I know personally."

George is not ready to give up hope on City yet. It's been an up-and down week, he admits. "But I always look on the bright side. I'm of the opinion that we will come out at the other end."

And if City do survive, he and Kath agree there should be no doubt about who should get the Player of the Year award: manager Terry Dolan and every one of his players should share it.

"They have been magnificent," says George. "The spirit could not have been better."

The mascot...

STEVE Ovenden can scarcely keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"How can four men, how can they destroy 80 years of tradition, and the hopes of 4,000 of us that go there every other week, all for personal gain?" says the man more familiar to York City fans as Yorkie the Lion, the furry mascot who inspires his football heroes from the sidelines.

The 33-year-old Crown Prosecution Service case worker from Tadcaster Road has been a York City fan since he was a lad.

"Once you've got a club, you've got it for life," he says. "It's a massive part of my life. The thought it might go down the tubes.... it's a terrifying prospect. I just don't know what I would do. It would leave an absolutely massive hole.

It's the sense of belonging, the shared pride and camaraderie win or lose, that he loves so much about the club.

"It's a sense of pride in your city, of pride in your community." he says. "There are so many good memories. Even something like.... I wasn't going to go to Torquay last Saturday, then somebody rang me and said somebody had dropped out. I went, and they got beat 3-1, but it didn't matter because there were so many good people there that you just have a laugh about it, and everybody is picking one another up."

He blames City Of York Council for not doing more to save York City; he blames John Batchelor for not delivering on his promises; but most of all he blames Douglas Craig and his fellow directors of Bootham Crescent Holdings.

One person he doesn't blame is manager Terry Dolan - or his players or coaching staff.

"Terry has suffered at the hands of supporters some of the time," he admits. "But the dignity of the man comes out as this affair has gone on. He and his coaching staff and all the players - they are just first class."

If it is all up for City, Steve says he would almost rather Saturday's home game against Swansea doesn't go ahead.

"It's all you look forward to, is Saturday," he says. "You know that at 3pm on Saturday you're going to be at the match. But now I just don't want Saturday to come around. I'm dreading Saturday.

"If it is going to be going down the tubes, then I don't know that I want the game to be played. It would be awful to be thinking that you're watching the last 90 minutes of football."

The communications manager...

JAMES Richardson will never forget his first York City game. It was October 1984, he was 11 years old, City were at home to Bristol Rovers, and James was one of a crowd of 7,000.

"I thought, wow, this is amazing. City went top of the old Division Three." The Nunthorpe School pupil picked a good time to become a fan. "It was about two years before we saw them lose."

James was hooked. He began to become more involved with the club, first as a programme seller. Then, after returning to his home city with a geography degree from Salford University, he took a job in the club shop.

From there he became shop manager, then commercial manager, and 18 months ago he was appointed City's website editor and communications manager.

On Monday, James will begin a new job as a sales consultant with Wallis Business Services in York. It will be his first non-City job.

The move was a real wrench, and he feels guilty about it even though everyone has told him he has done the right thing.

But when he was given half pay in November he knew he had to go. "You stop thinking everything's going to be okay."

James, who lives with his girlfriend in Poppleton, is quick to point out that there are members of the York City backroom "family" who have been there far longer than him. But everyone has tried to stay positive throughout.

"There has been a lot of shock and surprise about what has happened. The most difficult thing has been the uncertainty. It's a word you will hear all the time.

"As a fan, I can see the fan's side, which is it's going to be a nightmare if we lose our football club. I have never been as worried about my job as I have about the club.

"I got an email from a friend today saying, forget about the job, our whole way of life will change.

"Saturday comes along, it's not 'what are you doing?' it's 'where are City playing, and who's driving?' You do it almost by auto-pilot. If anything went wrong, it would mean a whole change in my life."

The same could be said of 3,000 other all-weather supporters, he said.

There is still hope. "The ideal scenario is it's taken over by somebody who wants to run it as a football club, who's reasonable in terms of matching income with expenditure, and they're in it for the right reasons, not for personal gain."

With admirable restraint, he describes his reaction to the way the club has been managed over the last year and a bit as disappointment.

"Disappointment that what's happened has been allowed to happen. I would be absolutely devastated if Saturday was the last game. So would a lot of other people."

The youth coach...

IT was a proud day for Garry Naylor when his son Glenn made his debut for York City. Garry had been in the ranks of City's reserve team when he was 15.

But when Glenn moved on, Garry's commitment to his team only deepened. "Over the last few years I have been youth development officer," he explained. "I am responsible for all the young players from the under-eights to the under-16s."

This is no easy undertaking. After finishing his day job at Portakabin at 4.30pm, he is out of the house by five for coaching sessions that last until 9.30pm. Then he's watching matches on Saturdays and Sundays.

He does it because he loves it. But since City's problems became known, he's noticed fewer of the kids from the North East turning up; they might be switching allegiance to Hartlepool or Darlington's youth programmes instead.

Meanwhile, the Premiership scouting sharks are circling, ready to snap up certain young players if City goes out of business. It is a difficult time, he admits.

Garry is upbeat about the club's chances of staying in business. But he feels for those youngsters he has guided into the squad - such as Stuart Wise, Lee Bullock and Chris Fox. "Football in general is in a bad state," he said.

But being in charge of the youth teams gives him hope. "We are still planning for the future."

Updated: 12:14 Thursday, January 16, 2003