THE most successful York-area football team in recent years has been forced to call it quits due to a drastic downturn in player numbers.

Osbaldwick FC have had to pull both their first team and reserve team out of the Leeper Hare York and District Football League, a competition they won an unprecedented ten years on the trot from 1984 to 1993.

They also won the York Saturday Senior Cup four years out of five between 1987 and 1991, being runners-up the other time.

The club had three players during those glory years - Ian Wilson, John Harrison and Peter Heath - who played in each of those ten triumphant top-flight seasons.

Conversely, just five players turned up for the first-team's match against Black Horse a week last Wednesday and after a crisis meeting club chiefs have decided there was not enough player commitment to continue.

The first team had played only one premier division game this season, a 6-1 loss to Dunnington, which will now be scrapped from the record books.

Colin Atkinson, the league's fixtures and referees' secretary, said: "It's a great pity that a once very successful team have been faced with having to withdraw its teams.

"I believe their intention now is to regroup and apply to join the league in division three next season."

The club, which was formed in the mid-1970s, could have withdrawn its reserve team and filled the first team with those players, but they feared there would not be enough quality to compete at premier division level. And while there might have been an option for the club to start the season in a lower division had they withdrawn their second team during the summer, the fact the campaign has started means this is now not possible.

Updated: 11:30 Thursday, September 02, 2004