FORMER York City favourite Ted MacDougall has teamed up with the City of York Girls League to make life easier for its army of administrative volunteers.

MacDougall, who scored 40 goals during two seasons with the Minstermen before finding fame with Manchester United, Scotland and Norwich where he was the old first division's leading marksman, is now an ambassador for GotFootball - the UK branch of the software package that has swept America due to its online short-cuts that have revolutionised the often tedious job of running grassroots clubs and competitions.

The City of York Girls League, which will boast a record number of 70 clubs for the new season on the back of England Lionesses' third-place finish at the World Cup, will be one of ten in this country to adopt the GotFootball initiative during the 2015/16 campaign with the West Riding League having signed up too.

Should the pilot prove successful, the system will then be rolled out in the larger York & Ryedale Mini Soccer League the following year with David Winterburn secretary to both leagues.

MacDougall, who is now based in Florida, has made several trips back to the Minster city in recent months to meet Winterburn with the league's committee rubber-stamping the new partnership when the Inverness-born, 68-year-old attended their recent AGM.

The former Liverpool apprentice, who was released by the legendary Bill Shankly prior to his arrival at Bootham Crescent in 1967, only finished coaching in the States last year when he stepped down from training junior club Atlanta Spurs - an offshoot of the senior semi-pro side Atlanta Silverbacks, who he had also worked for previously.

He had planned to enjoy his retirement before GotSoccer founder Gavin Owen Thomas made an approach for his services.

The pair had met in the past on a UEFA A-licence refresher course with South African Thomas a former Fulham and Arsenal Ladies coach and journalist with CNN.

In his new role, MacDougall has been meeting league officials and staging presentations in Britain, with imminent plans to canvas interest in Ireland and Canada too.

On the package's appeal, the former Red Devil explained: "It's a software package for amateur leagues that deals with administrative jobs such as team registration and fixtures. It makes those jobs take minutes, rather than weeks.

"If clubs want, we can provide a 100 per cent paperless service. We work in 27 states in the US and, out of four million kids registered as footballers across the country, we have two million.

"We also deal with all the MLS fixture scheduling and do all the Disney tournaments. We are launching it in England now and it's been well received.

"People can be loathe to change over here but they tend to listen when we explain we have a bigger database of players, coaches and families now than FIFA. I am fully aware that most league officials are volunteers and I know of one league down south where it can take five of them two weeks to register one age group but, rather than issuing laminated cards, we can do that in minutes."

MacDougall added that he derives great personal satisfaction from giving something back to the city that helped launch a notable career in football which included a record nine-goal haul during an 11-0 mauling of Margate in an FA Cup tie for his next club Bournemouth.

"I have fond memories of my time at York," he explained. "I met some lovely people and it would be great if we can make the lives of some of the football volunteers around here easier."

Winterburn, who is also secretary of the North Riding County Women's League and an administrator for the North Yorkshire Girls Centre of Excellence, is confident that will prove the case.

On his reasons for embracing GotFootball, Winterburn said: "It's an all-encompassing, league administration package. Administration takes up a lot of time - both from the league and clubs' point of view - but this offers all the facilities you want to run a league.

"It covers all bases from the registration of teams and players, an online ID system and a system to confirm results. A lot of people get put off junior football in this country or frustrated because there's so much administration involved and my wish is to make things easier for everybody.

"This also makes things easier from year to year. For example, if anybody changes their telephone number or email address, they can do that by accessing a database and everybody gets the new details.

"We've got a lot of people who are adverse to change in this country and like to stick with the way things have always been done but I've always wanted to do things slicker and a bit more efficiently where possible and, if we can save people time, I want to do that. We shouldn't be filling in pieces of paper now when we don't need to.

"It's very big in America and they are looking for leagues to get it up and running over here, which we were happy to do."

As a City fan, Winterburn watched MacDougall cut his professional teeth at Bootham Crescent and was surprised when he received a cold call from his former hero.

"I asked him if he was the Ted MacDougall who played for York and left us for Bournemouth," he smiled. "Ted then laughed and said 'At last, somebody remembers me'!"

The City of York Girls League would also like to hear from anybody interested in sponsoring the competition either by calling David Winterburn on 01757 249046 or emailing david.winterburn@yahoo.co.uk