SATURDAY'S attendance of 7,856 was York City's biggest home gate for a competitive match in more than six years.

It was City's biggest Bootham Crescent crowd for a League match in nine years, when a crowd of 8,481 saw a scoreless stalemate played out between the Minstermen and Hull in December 1993.

It failed to beat the crowd of 9,003 that watched City tackle Manchester United side featuring the likes of David Beckham and Roy Keane in pre-season friendly in July 2000.

However, Saturday's crowd surpassed the 7,653 that watched City lose 2-0 to Fulham in last season's FA Cup and was more than the 7,527 that witnessed City's 2-1 Division Two win over Manchester City in December 1998.

It was even bigger - but only just - than the 7,854 crowd that saw City beat Everton 3-2 at Bootham Crescent in the Coca Cola Cup in 1996.

But it failed to top the 8,406 who watched City lose 2-0 to Leicester City in the very next round of the competition that same season.

With the club in administration, the crowd and subsequent gate receipts should provide a much needed boost to the City coffers.

Former City players Chris Jones and Chris Topping, stars of the 1970s team that graced the Second Division, took to the Bootham Crescent pitch at half-time to make an appeal for supporters to continue turning out in force.

Although the crowd was boosted by more than 3,500 visiting Hull fans, around 4,300 home fans were in attendance - a figure way above City's average home gate.

Jones appealed to fans to bring along friends, relatives and work-mates to City's upcoming home matches, starting with the New Year's Day clash with Scunthorpe United.

"An extra 2,000 people through the turnstile will help the club get rid of this debt and prove to the receivers we are a club that can survive," said Jones.

Topping said the club should not be allowed 'to fall down now because of one man' - a clear reference to former chairman Douglas Craig, of Bootham Crescent Holdings, who have sold the ground to York-based house-builders Persimmon Homes.

Craig nor current chairman John Batchelor were at Saturday's game.

However, Barry Swallow, still a Bootham Crescent Holdings director and a former team-mate of Jones and Topping, was in attendance.

Also watching the game from the directors' box was ex-chairman Michael Sinclair and Ian McAndrew, one of the club directors appointed by Batchelor.

Updated: 11:43 Monday, December 30, 2002