YORK Wasps' decline is a tale of goodwill and bad debt. If a business could be run on good intentions alone, the club would be thriving. But it also takes hard-headed financial acumen, something that has been conspicuously absent in the recent past.

The fans have become used to the club lurching from one crisis to another. Somehow it has always survived. This time is different, however. The scale of the mess has forced the Wasps to the very brink of closure.

The club has run up an astronomical debt of £180,000, which it has no hope of settling. Neither can it afford to pay its players or other staff. Suppliers' bills go unmet.

Former coaches Dean Robinson and John Paterson were awarded £17,000 between them at an industrial tribunal two months ago. They were promised the money by the club. They have not received a penny of the award.

It is a desperate situation which could rob York of a venerable and much-loved sporting institution - and wreck many people's livelihoods.

Quite how the Wasps came to be in such deep trouble is not fully clear. Fans of any club enduring a poor run of results desperately hope that next week their team's fortunes might suddenly improve. It appears that those who ran the club applied similar wishful thinking to its finances. But business is not a game.

The Wasps' last hope is that its major creditors will agree to enter into a Company Voluntary Arrangement. This is a serious decision for the creditors to take, particularly cash-strapped City of York Council, owed £46,000 of tax-payers' money.

For the good of the club, the fans and the city, we hope that this last ditch deal is enough to save York Wasps. If the club does survive, however, it must be placed under new, rigorous financial management.

The Wasps can no longer sidestep their responsibilities. They must learn to live within their means.