IN A sense I blame myself. Thir-teen years in this city and one match attended. It's not a proud record but football and me never did get on. Ever since football became trendy instead of being the refuge of sporting anoraks and skinheads, those of us without the passion have been kicking our heels on life's sidelines.

Sometimes it feels like there's a bit missing, the football-obsessive gene perhaps. Not having primal loyalty to any one team is a kind of freedom, yet it also sets you apart, cuts you off from the slings and arrows of outrageous supporterdom.

By luck, we chose a good one. York City versus Manchester City on December 19, 1998. Bootham Crescent was full and the atmosphere was great - a fine setting too for the Bootham virgin, as dusk nudged in during the second half and York Minster loomed above the football.

As those with statistical calculators for brains will recall, it was a wonderful victory for York City. The home side won 2-1, thanks to a last-minute goal from Andrew Dawson, who scored minutes after making his professional debut. As this news-paper's match report put it on the Monday, Dawson's goal was "the stuff of the richest festive fantasy. Yuletide yahoos all around".

Not so many yahoos recently. The sad spectre of failure sits above York City, or certainly over Bootham Crescent, which could end up as another of those executive city-living developments that pop up to fill any hole left in York, like trendy interlopers from another planet.

Yet Bootham Crescent isn't just any hole in the city, it is a football ground with a long history - not always a proud history, but the stuff of hope, pride and passing despair for those who stick with their team, through thin and thinner.

The situation facing York City says much about football today and about modern life.

There are those who are passionate about York City and thank heavens for that, because this troubled team needs all the ardour it can muster. Yet there are plenty of people in York with no passion or little interest in City, those who watch proceedings a little sadly, but feel no more.

Even to a football-phobe such as myself, York without City is unthinkable. Yet in the unsentimental world of modern football, it could just happen.

There is so much glamour and money at the top of football, so much attention spent on the super-successful clubs, that the brave minnows swim down smaller and smaller streams, more or less unnoticed by the world at large.

Ever since the Premier League launched in the 1992-93 season, life has been tough for the likes of York City. All the Sky millions have set apart the leading football clubs, creating an eye-catching, attention-grabbing elite whose players are the new movie stars, rich beyond the debt-troubled dreams of their fans.

Tribal loyalty is not what it was either. Of course there are impass-ioned, air-punching fans who cling to every worshipped inch of their side, kissing the boots of their players while spitting in the eye of everyone else.

Yet young fans are as likely to be drawn to one of the distant glamorous teams as to the struggling town or city side down the road, as illustrated by the Manchester United syndrome, whose fans famously come from all over the world.

Perhaps York City are ultimately doomed, whether or not they scramble out of this particular trench. I certainly hope this isn't so, but in the well-travelled, mobile modern world, local loyalties can get lost in the rush.

Maybe it's time I went once more.

Then again...

Updated: 10:45 Thursday, January 17, 2002