BUCKLE up, we're in for another stomach-churning, gut-wrenching, pulse-stirring, heart-racing, brow-sweating, teeth-clenching, knuckle-whitening York City ride.

The roller-coaster has this past week alone jolted, sped, stopped, and screeched off again, heading to the major hurdle so far faced - next Monday's meeting of creditors at Bootham Crescent.

In the run-up to the St Patrick's Day plea for salvation, there's been the revelation that among an estimated creditors' bill of more than £1,850,000, nearly £900,000 would have to be paid to the current playing staff to pay off their contracts.

Then, one of the Bootham Crescent Holdings' gang of four, John Quickfall, quit as a director of BCH, owners of the Crescent. He cited 'personal reasons' for his exit, which was accompanied by a pledge to 're-direct' all profits from his BCH share-holding to trying to save York City FC.

Within hours fans gathered in their hundreds for the 'Legends' Dinner' during which more than £6,000 swelled the war-chest of the Supporters' Trust, who, then launched a new 'Loan Notes' fund-raising initiative as part of its bid to buy the club just as club chairman John Batchelor sprang to defence of his controversial ten-month tenure.

Fans were also urged to buy a Lottery ticket and donate to City in the hope of winning a major prize, while they then discovered it was unlikely because of time and cost that any legal challenge would be made to BCH and its transfer of assets such as commandeering control of Bootham Crescent.

As to a new home for the club City of York Council chiefs pondered sanctioning a possible move to Huntington Stadium. Oh, and on the field, the Minster marvels rebounded from being downed at Darlington to conquer Cambridge.

Yet for all those drama-oozing developments, they will all count for nought if an appeal launched by respected businessman and avid City fan John Dodsworth goes unheeded.

Besides vowing to hand over any profit from his minority share-holding in BCH, he also agreed to waive the £9,400 he is owed as a creditor, urging his fellow creditors to do the same.

If creditors decline to agree the administrator's proposal for a Company Voluntary Arrangement at next Monday's meeting, York City FC will fall.

With a CVA in place creditors will get only a fraction, if anything, of what is rightly due to them and there's no denying that it is a major ask for them to sacrifice full payment for the various services supplied to City during its year of living dangerously.

But if those owed money are determined to press for all their cash, then the only fate that awaits the club is for the City roller-coaster to career off the track, smashing to smithereens.

Therefore, all should heed Dodsworth's heart-felt appeal, when he declared: "If we (the creditors) don't accept the proposal then the job will be finished. The club will die.

"As creditors we have got to be sensible. We are owed about a total of £170,000, but we should not be bringing the down the club for £170,000."

FROM a feared demise to the sad loss of one of Britain's first sporting superstars.

Barry Sheene's death this week at the age of 52 from cancer robbed motor-cycling of one of its genuine greats.

Besides being a superbly skilled and courageous athlete, Sheene was a fine ambassador for his sport. In spite of his London roots he was feted throughout, nowhere more than in north Yorkshire where he ruled at Scarborough's Oliver's Mount. A real diamond geezer who will be much missed.

Updated: 09:18 Tuesday, March 11, 2003