WHEN Saturday comes York football guru Jim Collis will soon be in limbo.

After nigh on 27 years at the helm of Nestl Rowntree - indisputably north Yorkshire's leading amateur side - the final whistle will sound on an association laden with silverware.

Today's West Yorkshire League premier division clash at Aberford Albion will be the team's last - the club have decided to wind up their WYL membership. It will also be the final time Collis will be in charge.

Despite several enticing offers to assume command at other clubs in either the Northern Counties East League and its York and District equivalent, Collis is adamant Saturday will now be free of football.

To those players, fans and officials, who have encountered Collis as a player or manager for the past five decades this is tantamount to the Pope asking for Sundays off.

As manager of a club for whom he first appeared as a teenager in 1951 in the York Minor League, Collis' record is peerless. The club have won close on 80 trophies with championship crowns in each of the leagues in which they have played under Collis' canny stewardship - York and District, Northern Counties East League, Teesside League, and most recently the WYL.

Knockout conquests have been even more frequent. A dazzling array of county cups and league cup trophies have swelled a silverware collection to several polish-producers in profitable business.

But to paraphrase the late Kenneth Wolstenholme, what would have been unthinkable as all over, is now.

The parting, which has also accounted for Jon Reynolds, Collis' assistant for the last five years, has not been wholly amicable. But Collis, dogged by illness in what has proved his final season as manager, preferred to maintain a dignified silence.

"I will never knock the club," he said. "I'm disappointed that it's ending like it has. It's been a bit of an ache this year with my illness and with having problems getting a team out. But the lads who have stuck by us this year have been marvellous."

His loyalty is admirable especially when, but for a tragedy, he may never have shipped up back at Rowntree as boss.

Collis, who enjoyed success with the Three Cranes side in York's Sunday League and then Punch Bowl, whom he will continue to lead next season, revealed he was all poised to apply his particular brand of leadership to Stillington FC.

He recalled: "A lad called Barry Morse wanted me to go to Stillington, who, I believe, would have been bigger than Pickering Town now. They had everything in place, but sadly Barry died of a brain tumour and the driving force wasn't there any more."

Soon after, Jimmy Reid, who last month ironically quit as Pickering manager, convinced Collis to come to Rowntree, where Reid was a player after being released by York City. Success upon success was instant. In four years, Rowntree won the York and district League first division three times with the other year as runners-up.

The Northern Counties League was next. In ten years and against teams such as Harrogate Town, Ossett Town, Ossett Albion and Farsley Celtic - all current members of the UniBond League set-up - Rowntree twice won the title, finishing runners-up four times.

Five years on the bounce the club qualified for promotion, but were unable to make the leap because their Mille Crux ground did not have floodlights.

The Collis-led odyssey turned to the Teesside League, the 'hardest we ever played in' said the manager.

"It was not the best, but some of the pitches were bad and referees were like some of the players - they took no prisoners. You had to do something drastic like jump on a bloke to get booked. But it was a good education."

Another three championships, one including the illustrious Macmillan Bowl were captured before the extensive travelling forced another shift towards the WYL. Seven seasons on, Trees' booty included two titles, a runners-up place and the League Cup.

Throughout his 27 years Collis has always evoked as avuncular an image as the late Bob Paisley of Liverpool. But there is a steely side to Collis. There must be. This is a man, who as an impetuous teenager pestered another former Anfield legend - Bill Shankly, he of the grrr and burr, about why he was not a first-choice for Huddersfield Town back in the 1950s.

When Shankly countered with a list of players, including internationals who were ahead of Collis, he opted to come back to York, explaining: "I was so impatient. It was the same with cricket. I had the ability to play professional at both. What I needed, I suppose, was a manager like I am now to have been looking after me then."

Collis dazzled as a local footballer, as he did in cricket, where he won a stack of trophies for Huntington and Heworth, including that rare feat of capturing all ten wickets in one match for the former against York RI in 1969.

But, even as he has made a successful impact in golf these past five years, football has been his enduring passion. Of the countless players he has nurtured he cited Neil Grayson, currently starring in Cheltenham's Third Division play-off push, as the best he has worked with.

Collis has lived by the ethos of playing football the right way and Saturdays just won't be the same again.

Updated: 10:47 Saturday, May 04, 2002