Former Press York City correspondent Dave Flett first got to see the Minstermen play as a boy - as a supporter of his home town club Doncaster Rovers.

If anyone had told him that as an adult he would watch York City every weekend for 16 years while willing the club to succeed, he wouldn't have believed them. But that's what happened. Dave covered City for The Press from 2003 to 2019. And when the club wanted someone to write a definitive history for its 100th anniversary, he was the obvious choice.

Dave spoke to City greats from every era and also landed exclusive interviews with footballing legends such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Mark Lawrenson and Charlie Nicholas. The result is a 600-page history of Bootham Crescent, packed with memories, photos and research. Here, Dave writes about his eight year labour of love writing the book...

"I started writing the book eight years ago and it’s my proudest piece of work. It was a real privilege to speak to so many of the club greats from all eras and collect their memories of the highs and lows they experienced at the ground, including the likes of Barry Jackson and Alf Patrick, who are sadly no longer with us.

“I also managed to gather the thoughts of several big personalities in the game, probably none bigger than Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave me some brilliant anecdotes from the famous night when Manchester United were knocked out of the League Cup at Bootham Crescent.

"I got in contact with Sir Alex’s secretary through Tommy Heron – a player in City’s 1964-65 promotion-winning season who is also a member of the Manchester United Old Boys’ group.

“His secretary said she would get back to me but, then, a few weeks later, out of the blue, my former colleague at The Press Pete Martini took a call from the legendary manager in the office on my day off.

"He naturally thought it was a joke, but quickly realised the unmistakable accent was legitimate and Sir Alex told him to contact me and ask me to ring him on a certain number within the next 15 minutes.

“Luckily, I picked up Pete’s call and conducted arguably the biggest interview I’ve done in my life in our living room at home and, afterwards, could only share my excitement with our pet Dalmatian.

“I also did another interview with Mark Lawrenson over the phone about the FA Cup battles with Liverpool in the 1980s that had to be aborted when the fire alarm went off at a hotel I was staying in for a midweek game in Portsmouth!

"He was really understanding too and was happy for me to ring him back after the pandemonium had settled down.

“Charlie Nicholas spoke to me, meanwhile, about being on the receiving end of one of the biggest-ever FA Cup shocks with Arsenal, as he did a charity walk with former Countdown presenter Jeff Stelling, who shared his memories of being a young radio reporter and having to down bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale during morning press conference at Bootham Crescent with 1970s’ manager Charlie Wright.

“Researching the book was also, sometimes, a painstaking undertaking and, for several months, involved a weekly round trip to Bradford to bring home very dusty collections of archived Press newspapers much to the delight of my wife!"