WHEN what was to become York's prime rugby league club was first founded it had precious little money and no permanent home.

Some 134 years later some people would argue that not so much has changed after the bombshell announcement that York Wasps has folded.

Back in 1868 it was said that the burgeoning club's assets amounted largely to a pair of portable posts ferried from venue to venue on a cart. At least then they could boast a cart.

York Rugby League Club 2002 have hit a brick wall.

In an act, whose melodrama would not have been out of place in the Victorian era during which the club first struggled into existence, the current outfit has closed, terminating its tenure in the Northern Ford Premiership.

Only an entrepreneur with mega-resources and charisma aplenty represents the only way for the beleaguered Wasps to clamber out of their latest financial midden.

However, even in the world of sport where the improbable happens on a regular basis, it does not look likely that lightning will strike twice and a white knight in the shape of another John Batchelor - York City's recent saviour - will gallop to the rescue.

Whereas the Wasps' football contemporaries at least had the asset of their own ground to fall back on, the rugby league has nought. Its home - the oft-maligned Huntington Stadium - belongs to the City of York Council.

The future looks bleak.

And indeed any glimpse of rosy days ahead have largely been grim since the turn of the new century.

Despite several false dawns, dark days have increasingly menaced a club, where the noose of meagre resources, scarcer revenue, and ever-dwindling support, has tightened inexorably.

Fans will point to the move from its Clarence Street home of more than 100 years to the Huntington Stadium in 1989 as the beginning of the end.

Clarence Street still resonates in the memories of the core of York fans. There were the glory days of reaching the Challenge Cup final in 1931, the run to the semi-finals in 1984 halted only by Leeds RLFC at Elland Road.

Three times York too proudly held aloft the Yorkshire Cup in 1923, 1934 and 1937 as crowds regularly topped 3,000, while there was division two championship success in 1981.

Since the move to the club's new home, whose running track around the pitch is anathema to the spirit of watching the game at close-quarters, apathy has grown apace.

But there has still been plenty to grab attention such as the performances of the likes of Stewart Horton, Graham Steadman, Nick Pinkney, and Jamie Benn, plus imports of the calibre of Tawera Nikau, Peter Fitzgerald, and present skipper Peter Edwards.

There was even promotion success just four years ago when the club clinched an ascent from the second division.

Significantly that success was later reported to have cost £310,000 in wages swallowing up almost the entire the £330,000 allocation from the then News Corporation broadcast deal.

So as the new Millennium drew nearer the demise of York RLFC became significantly more progressive until today when the last game of professional rugby league might well have been played in York.

Here are some of the major fault-lines that have fissured in the last few years.

Updated: 11:27 Wednesday, March 20, 2002