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[UkrainianPhil]

To follow on from Ballers intro........

Douglas Craig was a Scottish ex-Tory councillor who was the Chairman of York City. For a while he did quite a good job with the club's finances as we went through a successful period of winning the play-off final at Wembley in 1993, narrowly missing out on promotion the following year then beating Man United in 1995 and Everton 1996 both in the League Cup.

What happened next is a bit of a mystery, but something somehow snapped in Douglas Craig. Whether it was pure greed or whether it was revenge for a barrage of criticism he was receiving from some sections of our support, only he will be able to answer. On the pretext of "protecting the ground", Craig formed a new holding company, Bootham Crescent Holdings, and with the support of the then Board of Directors, transferred ownership of Bootham Crescent from the club to the new company, thus separating the ground from the club to "protect" it. At around this time York City started paying ridiculously high wages to crap players, which was surprising because of Craig's reputation of being "prudent". Players like Alex Mathie, at the time York City finally went into administration, were earning £1,300 a week in the 3rd division!

Clearly this was a deliberately orchestrated financial crisis in order to force the issue, bring the club to the brink, and to allow Craig to close the club down, and sell Bootham Crescent to make a personal profit to the tune of over £3 million.

Thousands of pounds were raised by the supporters, a Supporters Trust was formed and, the club was propped up by these injections. Then, a second disaster. Craig's problem was that the Football Club had a 99 year lease on the ground and so, while still in existence, they couldn't be kicked out of their own ground. So, in came racing tycoon John Batchelor, who bought the club for £1 from Craig. In a staggering move only to be discovered later, Batchelor signed a deal with local housebuilder Persimmon Homes to cut the lease down to only 1 year in return for a bribe of £450,000 "sponsorship money" the majority of which was spent on Batchelor's racing team. On top of crackpot ideas like changing the badge and the name of the club to "Soccer Club" ("to sell the club to the American market") finally Batchelor was ousted and the Supporters Trust took over the club. However, with no money to employ a decent manager, Chris Brass was appointed player-manager and the club finished bottom of Division 3 and lost our league status. Brass had been a hero in difficult times but was never going to be a manager.

The Club then secured a loan from the Football Foundation to buy back the ground from Bootham Crescent Holdings. However, the interest which needs to be paid over this period amounts to £100,000 plus per season, thus crippling the club and one of the main reasons why we can't get out of the Conference and probably won't for a number of years. Annoyingly this allowed Craig and former player Barry Swallow to ride off into the sunset, their pockets full of our money. We also now have to deal with the terms of the loan deal which means that we have to move into a new stadium by 2013 as part of the agreement with the FF and with Persimmon Homes. Those of you who have stood in the away end at York will have seen the nice posh flats next door - that is what the rest of the ground will look like in a decade's time.

From a personal point of view it's hard not to be bitter about this state of affairs - where were the FA with the "fit and proper persons" bollocks at the time? Did they do anything to help us? Even the Inland Revenue tried to screw us by making us pay off a big share of the debts Craig had run up despite Leicester City only having to pay 10p in the pound at around the same time.

It makes me sick to talk about it because now we are skint, in the Conference, losing 4-1 at home to a part-time team from a village, and the future doesn't look particularly bright as attendances plummet and morale hits rock bottom.

I hope Mr Craig is enjoying his retirement while we are all left to rebuild our football club.

[teasybeaver]

It makes me sick to talk about it because now we are skint, in the Conference, losing 4-1 at home to a part-time team from a village, and the future doesn't look particularly bright as attendances plummet and morale hits rock bottom.

Its a shocker of a story!

However, I had to laugh at this because we are also pretty skint, in the conference and losing to part-time village teams. For us, we haven't has it this good in years!!!! hahaha

[Jezza]

Terrible another of our rivals may follow Runcorn linnetts..I think the York story aint so far away from the Connett story. The Walrus will have a nice stadium that he can rent to MUFC as well as the land and the restaurants etc with the football club as a totally seperate entity of course sadly taking the rap for all the debts.

Our football club will suffer as a result of playing less historically interesting matches like those against Vics and playing village teams with owners living the dream for a few years before they too probably go bust.

History is what makes a football club....the walrus should not be allowed to get away with ending Northwich's nearly as proud as Alty's history..he should be forced to hand over the football club to the fans and give a 99yr peppercorn rent on the stadium while transferring the debt to the holding company and making the ba$tard pay his dues like everyone else rather than propsering out of not paying your bills.

Step one the conference should fine him £100k if he fails to fulfil this years fixtures...payable in advance now...see how the walrus likes that! Step 2..the local council should only grant planning permission on any further developement subject to the football club neing transferred debt free into other hands..the council should actually propose a road through the cement works or something.

[Uncle Globnasty]

This is unbelievably sad. We will no longer have a green and white pot to p**s in. All of those memories of countless derbies both at Moss Lane and the Drill Field.....even though they had a fairly good record against us, these games were ALWAYS anticipated with a certain relish that seldom applied to other fixtures.

I am truly saddened and angry that a business (not football) man can do this with seeming impunity. I sincerely offer my best wishes for the future to all Vics fans and TRUE club people (and I never thought I'd hear myself utter those sentiments).

[Sharp Street Alty]

All this episode has served to do is to make me appreciate the job Geoff and Graham have done at our club. I was one of those criticising but  never criticised their effective management of the club. It also makes me even more wary of suger daddy chairman who promise the world.

[Mallorca Alty]

The F.A. is to blame for allowing these people to get away with finanacial mis-management. What is the betting Connett will buy another football club and ruined it. Just  like Guterman was allowed to ruin Wrexham Football Club after messing up Chester foootball Club finances. But there is no hope when Brian Barwick is on the F.A. board. What a great job he did with ITV Digital.

[Darren]

What will happen to the stadium? I presume it will be stripped and the assets sold off like they were at Scarborough?

There ground is owned by a seperate company i believe so basically the football club don't have any assets.
Sad indeed looking forward to getting squashed again at Vics ground on derby day

[Darren]

They may get sumc ash but not enough  SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER
NORTHWICH VICTORIA v EXETER CITY (5.15) Live on Setanta

[flaggerN]

At the start of a season does a club have to show they have a certain amount of cash to guarantee fulfilling their fixtures ?

[chrisrufc]

"I completely agree with you. In my mind the FA are still nowhere near strict enough on making sure ownership and ground are the same"

Couldn't agree with you more.  We lost our ground, nightclub and training ground to our ex chairman and in return his company wrote off the debts (£2 Million) that the club built up under their administration, so effectively they get away with running the club at a loss and meanwhile we have to lease the ground from them with the nagging feeling that they want us to go under

[Bob]

Given how much Moss Lane would be worth for housing, I'm relieved that Trafford Council own the ground and that there's a covenant in place.  I've no doubt that if we had owned the ground, some developer would have come in years ago and finished us off, pocketing millions in the process.

[NVFC-Fan-07]

Yes thank you all, it shows wot a joke our chairman is even our rivals have sympathy for us

anyway thank you all for the support n gd luck with the rest of the season !!!