York City is flying high in the Conference. But ordinary supporters could be about to lose their controlling interest in the club - to the family who helped bring about collective ownership. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

FOR York City fans, the 5-1 thumping of struggling Forest Green at home last weekend was what the game is all about.

On-form Andy Bishop struck a glorious hat-trick - the first City player in 34 years to do so in the first half - and his side extended their winning streak to four games.

The Minstermen are now only one point behind Morecambe, who occupy the final play-off spot - and they have a game in hand.

City boss Billy McEwan may have banned the p-word (play-off word) for now. But after a disappointing mid-third of the season, the team are on a roll again, and their chances of occupying one of those vital play-off places are very real.

"This is the best season we've had in ten seasons," said fan Graham Bradbury. "If anyone had said to me last season would I be happy with us being in with a chance of the playoffs... Well. It's just a massive change."

Sadly, as all football lovers in York will know, the club's fine form on the pitch masks desperate financial problems off it.

City is in debt to the tune of £500,000 and directors Jason and Sophie McGill were forced to travel to London on Wednesday to explain to Football Foundation executives why the club missed its first £100,000 interest payment on the £2 million loan to buy back Bootham Crescent.

The real tragedy is that the club's precarious financial position could mark the beginning of the end of a dream which turned into an unlikely reality in March 2003 - that of a professional football club wholly owned and run by its supporters.

It was on March 26, 2003, that York City Supporters' Trust was unveiled as the club's new owner, after a nail-biting few days in which the Inland Revenue threatened to scupper the deal.

After facing extinction under previous chairmen Douglas Craig and John Batchelor, York City instead belonged to the people who cared about it most - the fans.

That collective ownership is something about which fans feel hugely proud, says Dave Allison, of the Friends of Bootham Crescent.

Even relegation from the Football League, while a blow, did not alter that.

"A lot of people feel an immense sense of pride when they stand on the terraces," says Dave, a City supporter since his teens.

He recalls the dark Friday back in February 2003 when fans were warned the club was on the brink of extinction - and that the fans had 72 hours to raise £60,000 to save it.

Remarkably, they succeeded - with bucket collections alone raising £20,000.

There is nothing to beat that sense of collective achievement, Dave says. "Some people were saying 'that's it, we've gone'. But we weren't and we did it!"

Which makes it all the harder to bear that three years on, ordinary supporters face losing control of the club - and to a family which played a key role in bringing collective ownership about.

Malton-based JM Packaging, whose company secretary and director Rob McGill is the father of City directors Jason and Sophie McGill, is asking what provisions have been put in place by the club to repay a £300,000 loan due next January.

The supporters' trust board is now considering offering JM Packaging shares in the club - in return for that loan being treated as an investment.

Should that happen, Rob McGill has also offered to underwrite the club's losses this season - expected to reach six figures.

The crunch question, however, is how much of a stake in the club JM Packaging would want.

Many supporters fear it would ask for a controlling stake of more than 51 per cent of shares - effectively meaning the club would pass into the hands of the McGill family.

It is a situation that has divided fans.

Dave Allison admits that Jason McGill did as much as any single person to save the club. But that's not the point, he says.

"We the club would not be here today if it were not for the fans," he says.

"That's a fact. York City has survived because we as a group of people collectively saved the club."

There is a paternalistic view in some football circles that fans can't be trusted to run their own club, Dave says - that clubs need a "sugar daddy" with lots of money to take charge. "But the idea that fans can't do it themselves is insulting," he says.

Dave insists that because of what happened in 2003, many York City supporters are very knowledgeable about the business end of running a club.

The decisions which have to be taken are exactly the same, whether a club is owned by a supporters trust or a rich individual or company, he points out. And clubs such as Exeter (not to mention Barcelona and Real Madrid) prove that collective ownership can work.

"Jason McGill is unarguably the single individual who has done the most for the club," he says. "But he has to understand that we all, including him, fought to gain ownership of the club individually. That principle still stands."

Not all supporters agree, however. Graham Bradbury is firmly in the camp that believes the McGills taking a controlling interest would be the best thing.

Yes, Graham says, in an ideal world it is wonderful for the fans to own their own club. But, in the real world, clubs need someone with real business sense and some money behind them to be in charge.

The club can't keep relying on bucket collections at home matches to keep going, he says. So he would be happy to see the McGills taking a controlling interest in the club - provided they continue to liaise with the supporters' trust. They and finance director Terry Doyle have done an "excellent job", he believes.

"If we get promoted this season, everybody will be happy," he says.

In a sense, that is the key. Any full-time professional club is going to struggle to balance its books when it is languishing outside the Football League.

City may have the second-best attendance record in the conference, with an average home gate of over 2,600. But that is still not enough. Graham says it needs four or five thousand fans to be regularly turning up at Kit Kat Crescent. "We're sixth in the league," he says. "We should be approaching 3,500 at least."

For Dave Allison, that just doesn't wash.

It is no good basing your economics on unreasonable crowd expectations or the hope of a decent cup run, he says - as if determined to demonstrate that supporters can show a good grasp of economics.

He would like to have seen the club cutting its suit according to its cloth this season by keeping a tighter rein on spending, instead of mounting an all-out push for promotion. Signing players such as Neil Bishop was all very well, he says. "He was a great signing." But the club really couldn't afford him.

"If we were to miss out on the play-offs this season because we did not sign players, but we paid the Football Foundation - well, that would have been the right decision," he says. "I would love to be in the play-offs. But the manager Billy McEwan said it would take three years. We've got to be patient."

Promotion or not, the bottom line is that supporters have got to hold on to the principle of owning the club, he insists.

"We've got to stop thinking we cannot run the club ourselves," he says. "We can!"

Club statement...

In a statement to the Evening Press today, York City communications director Sophie McGill said: "To maintain the club's current infrastructure with a professional manager, a team good enough to compete in the top half of the Conference, along with a reserve team and a buoyant youth policy, we need cash injection on an ongoing basis. At present the club is under funded and is seeking investment to grow and prosper, something the Supporters' Trust is discussing with J M Packaging.

"Everyone at the club fully supports supporter ownership, but there has to be a realisation that at present the trust is unable to fund York City Football Club in its current form. I believe true York City fans want to see the club survive and prosper with its existing infrastructure and we can only achieve this with outside investment.

"The current situation we are in is not unusual, as fellow trust-owned clubs such as Chesterfield and Lincoln City have also had to reduce their share ownership in order to ensure long term survival. The key issues for supporters are that the club has a successful team, it continues to have trust representatives on the Football Club Board and that the ground is safeguarded for the future, all things the supporters' trust and J M Packaging want to see happen."

Supporters would still be ''better off''

Selby MP John Grogan, a lifelong Bradford City fan, is a passionate believer in supporters having more of a say in the running of their club.

He has even tabled a Private Member's Bill calling for all clubs to have a duty to involve supporters in the running of the club - though it is, the MP accepts, very unlikely ever to see the light of day.

He is bitterly opposed to football clubs being a "rich man's plaything", but insists that even if the McGills do take a controlling interest in York City, it will still be far better off than many other clubs.

In many ways, York supporters have been living the ideal, he agrees - and he understands that many will feel aggrieved at seeing that taken away.

But it will be more a question of two steps forward and one step back than a loss of everything the trust stood for, he says. "The supporters trust would still have a minority shareholding. They would still be much better off than they were even five years ago."

Updated: 09:17 Friday, March 03, 2006