Point of order for City

Damaging draw-strings, which have throttled the glow from York City's season, tightened further to effectively erase play-off aspirations.

The countdown from ten is now on. Five games apiece at home and away comprise the campaign's conclusion. But barring a mathematical miracle on the scale of extracting drinkable water from the moon City's ascent into the top six has stalled.

How ironic that another equal redistribution of wealth should 'do' for City. They could quite easily swap sponsored shirt-names with Everton, who sport, of course, the motto: One to One.

It is said charity begins at home. Now for City it's parity.

From Boxing Day onwards City have drawn four of their seven outings at Bootham Crescent. The fact they have also lost twice in the same home period compounds the problem.

Yet it's those four draws that most irritate, irk and itch. City's total of share-alls now stretches to a running-to-stand-still 14 games this season. Equality has diluted quality. Everything that has been memorable has been tarnished by those final, half-way house score-lines.

Every season engenders enough 'if onlys' to have flooded the Titanic had the 'unsinkable' liner missed that tower-block of ice in 1912. But consider this. If City had only won half of those 14 games that would have yielded another 14 points to have left them third, not 13th, today. You can almost hear the hair being ripped asunder from scalps.

Strangely, there was enough evidence from Saturday's clash to suggest contrasting viewpoints that either side were lucky to escape with even a point.

City detractors would recall a first-half of interminable dross from the hosts. Against that was a second-half transformation in which City should have finally laid to rest the jinx that has accompanied all three duels with the Latics.

A draw was probably the fairest outcome, though it more suited Wigan enabling them to scrape further from the relegation minefield that has threatened them despite investing more than a million pounds.

The Latics did not boast the sheen of millionaires in the first-half, but at least they did not look the paupers that the men of York resembled. Not this season have City conspired to play so awfully. Individually most red-shirted ranks were lamentable, collectively they were pitiful.

It was as if such a vital component as the ball was a stranger to the hosts. Keeping possession was trickier than lassoing the wind. A nervousness enveloped and ensnared the defence, where only home debutant Neil Thompson proffered any composure or class in that fitful first 45 minutes.

Errors riddled the Minstermen like holes in a sieve. The only consolation was that Wigan, far more assertive in the tackle, could not take advantage, Graeme Jones and Paul Rogers passing up gilt-edged chances.

Rodney Rowe and Andy McMillan were thwarted by Irish international goalkeeper Roy Carroll. But Wigan's deadlock-smasher in stoppage-time to the first-half had the stamp of inevitability about it, skipper Colin Greenall's jack-knife header slicing a path into the net.

The start of the second-half seemed an age away with City back on the pitch a good two minutes before referee Fraser Stretton and their Lancashire opponents. It was later revealed the hosts wanted to make rapid reparation.

How they did. Some 37 seconds into the re-start Thompson, who has always possessed thunder in his left boot, blistered the air with a 30-yard free-kick that fizzed past Carroll.

Eight minutes on home hearts soared into exultation as Steve Bushell's shimmy and shot went one way then cannoned just off Pat McGibbon's foot to go the other direction into the net. More like it.

Energised City rediscovered their flair of old. Party pieces flowed and Alan Pouton parted the Wigan defence with Moses-type power. But his dash and goal became dash and woe, his whipped shot locating the side-netting.

A third then and the Latics would have been latticed. But three minutes later Wigan, who levelled late in stoppage time at Springfield Park, where they also bundled City out of the FA Cup, struck again.

Not for the first time Tony Barras, an erstwhile Wigan target, dallied. David Lee retrieved, Ian Kilford crossed, Jones nodded in. What a choker.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.