I DARESAY that I won't be the only one to have had a quiet smile, or even burst out laughing, when the Press sports pages reported on New Year's Eve that Douglas Craig said that Bootham Crescent Holdings was a democratically run organisation.

Those people who have known Mr Craig in his working life, in the political world on York City Council and in his football connections with York City, will be only too well aware that he has always been an autocrat with a singular disregard for other peoples' opinions. I hardly think he has changed direction at this advanced stage of his life.

Having followed the shocking business connected with the ground being sold for personal profit, the saddest feature is that all the hard work that Mr Craig and his cohorts have done in recent years will be forgotten as they are now connected with the most disgraceful chapter in City's 80-year Football League history.

Mr Craig is reported to have said that the reason for the ground sale move is that if he and his colleagues hadn't done it, someone else might have done.

There is an easy solution to that. Sign a legal document saying that the ground belongs to a trust and can't be sold for personal profit.

Is it too late for the BCH men to backtrack on their disgraceful, though we are told, perfectly legal, behaviour? Perhaps Mr Craig would like to tell us.

Brian Robinson,

Kingsway West,

Acomb,

York.

Updated: 17:41 Tuesday, January 14, 2003