FORGET last night's match at Stamford Bridge. Mere tiddlywinks.

Ignore the FA Cup final. Manchester United and Arsenal: who are they? (Apart from Arsenal being the York City of the Premiership, of course).

The real match of the season has already been settled.

Dubbed "The Battle Of Clifton", it was the final contest to decide which pub football team was the greatest.

More than 300 people turned out to watch the historic match between the Corner House pub and Clifton Hotel, who locked horns for many years in an intense rivalry.

And it was the Corner House team that proved victorious in a 7-5 thriller. The predicted bloodbath on the pitch never materialised and a minute's silence was given before the game to remember a popular Cliftonite who died recently, Alan Ball.

Most of the damage was done after the match as both teams went on a mammoth drinking session.

Did they do the Micklegate Run? After 90 minutes of limb-crunching football, several pints and a kebab they could barely do the Micklegate walk...

STILL with the beautiful game, the Diary was amused to hear Man U boss Alex Ferguson blaming his team's lack of penalties on a refereeing conspiracy this week.

Not so long ago, a United player only needed to sigh deeply within ten yards of the opposition penalty area to be awarded a spot kick.

Mind you, the distribution of penalties does seem to be somewhat haphazard. So the Diary has come up with a new system.

Every team is given the same quota of penalties, say six. Once that is used up, they never get another spot kick all season.

This would encourage goals from open play, and ensure a more robust approach to defending later in the season.

York City had four penalties awarded for them this campaign - remarkable considering the strikers suffer from a chronic fear of crossing the 12-yard line (boxophobia).

They scored three. Meanwhile, the Diary was glad to see that boss Billy "Graham" McEwan's list of players given the boot did not include his second top scorer, enigmatically known as OG (short for Owen Goal, we think).

BEFORE the final whistle is blown, do we have any Subbuteo experts in York? If so, please get in touch.

Updated: 10:44 Thursday, April 28, 2005