York City's Division Three game at Bootham Crescent last night would not have been played but for the assistance of York Cricket Club, which lent City draining equipment which helped make the pitch playable.

The "Waterhog" machine remarkably drained between 400 and 500 gallons of water during the one day, being used by head groundsman Bryan Horner right up until kick-off.

He said: "If we had not used it the game would definitely have been called off. The amount of water it took off was phenomenal."

Spokesman for the cricket club, Chris Houseman said: "There's a mutual fraternity of groundsmen always there to help each other to the benefit of sport. I'm glad it did the job - although City still lost."

The cricket club have had the machine for about three years. "It's extremely useful," added Houseman.

"When we have tarpaulin on the square that gets covered in water and before we can take them off we have to take the water off first using this Waterhog. And there's often outlying patches of water on the outfield and this machine considerably speeds up the drainage."

Without the use of the Waterhog yesterday, City reserves' home game against Grimsby Town tonight would also have been in doubt.

Updated: 11:35 Wednesday, January 24, 2001