THE new season may still be more than two months away but York City have already started digging for victory.

The club have undertaken an extensive repair programme to the Bootham Crescent pitch in a bid to safeguard the surface should last winter's monsoon-like conditions return.

Where the ground 'dips' in three areas the grass has been scalped off and the left-over holes filled with 22 tons of soil to leave a true level.

"The water was just laying in the low spots," explained Bryan Horner, City's head groundsman, as he recalled the heavy rainfall that left the city besieged by floods.

"In normal conditions the drains would just pull it off but there was that much water they couldn't do it.

"There shouldn't be any problems there again.

"Those areas have now been seeded and the seed is now coming through."

To help matters, four new drains have also been installed; two running the length of the pitch and two smaller ones running beyond the 18-yard boxes at either end.

A further 110 tons of sand has also been poured on to the pitch.

"The idea of that is to level the ground up and also get the sand down to help with the drainage and root-system," added Horner.

"If you get a good root-system you get a good covering of grass on top."

Despite all the renovations Horner admitted much of his work was now in the lap of the gods.

"What we want is some warm weather," he said, hopefully. "It would be fair to say the pitch took a bit of a hammering with the weather last season.

"It was the wettest on record and I have never known it as wet as it was last season. It was also a long season and there were a lot of games including a week of local football finals when the season was over.

"But this ground always plays well and it always comes back well.

"We can create the wet with the automatic watering system we have got - all we want is sunshine, but don't we all?"

Meanwhile, City chairman Douglas Craig and manager Terry Dolan have welcomed the new player link-up with Sunderland which was announced yesterday.

Craig said: "When Sunderland approached us with the idea of linking up to provide York City with their young players on loan we were of course delighted.

"It is a very exciting prospect and the arrangement will benefit both clubs."

Dolan said: "Sunderland have a lot of talented young players on their books, many of whom played in the Sunderland reserve team against Leeds at Bootham Crescent last month.

"It will be great to have the option of taking Sunderland players on loan to strengthen our squad."

Updated: 10:23 Saturday, June 02, 2001