Yorkshire were bracing themselves for a heated and acrimonious meeting today when the general committee were due to discuss the sensational departure of director of coaching Martyn Moxon.

But a successor to Moxon - who is going to Durham after an internal rift - will not be decided until next Tuesday at the earliest.

Bob Platt and his cricket committee will then sift through the applications so far received for Moxon's job and at the same time consider whether to re-write the job descriptions of current coaches Arnie Sidebottom and Steve Oldham.

Several representatives on the general committee are now beginning to realise just how badly Yorkshire's members and fans have reacted to the abrupt ending of Moxon's important role within the club and they will be asking why it was agreed so readily to release him from a contract which still had three years to run?

The cricket committee have been shocked by his departure and some members of the general committee will hear about it officially for the first time today.

Platt and his team have been held up in their attempts to sort out the mess be-cause captain David Byas is currently on holiday in America and has not yet been able to make any input into what will happen next.

Byas will be back in time for next Tuesday's meeting and the aim of the cricket committee is then to be able to come up with a firm recommendation, but today's meeting at Headingley may insist that there is a cooling off period with nothing being rushed through.

The possibility remains that the cricket committee would like to fine tune the roles of Sidebottom and Oldham so that they could take over some of Moxon's coaching duties, assisted by former Yorkshire off-spinner Geoff Cope who would fill an administrative post.

There could be opposition to such a plan, however, from some general committee members who would prefer an external appointment rather than patching things up from within.

But the problem with this is that it would certainly be much more costly and the fans would be left asking whether the new person could be reasonably expected to do any better than Moxon who is one of the most highly-rated coaches in the country.

It will be a hard task for Yorkshire to get it right whatever they do and some within the club are already wondering if more ought to have been done to sort out Moxon's problems and hold on to him.

Updated: 09:28 Thursday, January 11, 2001