TT No.92: Andy Gallon - Sat 15th November 2008; York City v Torquay United; Conference National;      Res: 1-2; Att: 2,412 (244 away); Admission: £17; Programme: £3 (44pp); FGIF Match Rating: **

Bootham Crescent, home to York City since 1932, is a ground living on borrowed time. The Minstermen have been looking to leave this hopelessly landlocked location for some time, and will anounce either in January or February next year the site on which their new stadium is to be built. Not before time, many would say. The ground, having suffered recently the grotesque indignity of being renamed KitKat Crescent as part of a we'll-do-anything-for-money sponsorship deal with the nearby Nestle factory, is palpably unfit for purpose. Its facilities, despite several brave and well intentioned makeovers, are simply outdated. Worse, unremarkable Bootham Crescent is a Plain Jane; lacking the beauty, bounce or style to warrant a second glance. Only a York City fan could love it.   The ground's proximity to the historical centre of York is both a blessing and a curse. There cannot be many  pleasanter ways to pass a couple of hours before any kick-off than by wandering the quirkily-named narrow streets, then strolling past the magnificent Minster and under the ancient walls by way of Bootham Bar, before breezing down B&B-lined Bootham Crescent to discover City's hidden midden. I suggest walking to the game advisedly because parking close to the ground is an impossibility. Gripped in the tight embrace of Victorian terraces and villas, Bootham Crescent sulks moodily in a straitjacket. To the grounds enthusiast, this is part - indeed most - of its charm. But logic and pragmatism insist its day is done.   Much of what there is to see here dates from the ground's 1930s opening - scarcely a winning decade for the design of functional buildings. The 80-yard Main Stand, on the east side, is a spartan structure. The hardness of its red brick and right angles was softened in the mid-1980s by the addition of unusual (for a football club) glazed wooden bays. These, rather scruffy now, overhang the tiny triangular car park and contain hospitality suites and community rooms. The back gardens and rear windows of adjacent terraced homes keep eternal watch. Good fences make good neighbours. A modern red-brick block by the main gate houses the club shop, in which former City manager Denis Smith was signing copies of his doubtless riveting autobiography. Inside, there's no disguising the Main Stand's age. It is all pokey corridors, steep, narrow flights of stairs and cramped, buttock-punishing wooden seats. Everyone, even the press and radio people, appears to be sitting on one another's knees, fighting for the space to breathe. The simple act of reaching into one's pocket requires an apology to one's neighbour. The seats run right down to the touchline, and a couple of perspex dugouts, since the former standing paddock was converted in 1994. The players' tunnel is central.   Despite the presence of columns supporting the roof, this is the best view Bootham Crescent can offer the spectator. To the left, or south, is the Dickensian uncovered away terrace; the Grosvenor Road End. It is most unsatisfactory, as anyone who has watched a game from there will testify. The crumbling steps are too narrow for standing in comfort and too shallow to provide a decent vantage point, the lighting is poor and, if the weather is inclement, you get either soaked or frozen, or both. To the right, or north, is the David Longhurst Stand, named after the striker who collapsed and died on the Bootham Crescent pitch in 1990 while playing for the Minstermen against Lincoln City. Opened a year later, this stand is a basic, boxy cover over terracing. At the rear, steps wind down a bank to toilets, behind which is a school on Shipton Street. Though closed and boarded up, this attractive red-brick building has a delightful clock tower which still peeps above the terrace roof. The Popular Side Stand, low with a deep roof, is opposite the Main Stand and runs the length of the west touchline. This used to be terracing and has been converted to seats, many of which are singularly forlorn in faded red. A TV gantry, and the club's pre-2002 logo, adorns the central section of the roof. Trees and rooftops are visible to the rear. What remains of City's white picket pitch surround fence runs along the front of this stand. The floodlights, a 1995 addition, are corner masts and replaced the original 1959-vintage pylons. All is neat, tidy and orderly. There is nothing actively offensive about Bootham Crescent; it merely lacks features to stimulate the senses and the imagination. No amount of bright, breezy signage can gainsay this fact.    The game promised a lot, but delivered little. York went into the match unbeaten at home in the league, while Torquay had not lost in 13. But it was error-strewn, torpid fodder; a poor advert for fifth-rate professionals. I'm sorry, but when one pays £17 - and £3 for a relatively slim, insultingly uninteresting programme - one expects rather more than schoolboy stuff. The inert first half, in which neither goalkeeper was called upon to make a save, plodded along at the pace of an obese American tourist gawping at the chintzy shops on The Shambles. The second period was hardly any better, though it did boast the decoration of three goals,  including a stoppage-time winner for the visitors, who rose to second in the table with a victory which equalled the club record of 14 matches without defeat. If the Gulls, largely unambitious and rarely any more startling than efficient, are the second best team at this level, some of the others must be truly terrible.   The opening 45 minutes passed off almost entirely without incident. Onome Sodje, the brightest ornament in a City side populated by journeymen dullards, squandered the only real chance when, in the fifth minute, he shot over the crossbar wildly from 18 yards having been sent scurrying through by a pass from Bruce Dyer, who showed, for a fleeting moment, why he once played in the Premier League and was the UK's first £1m teenager. Sodje, later marked out of the contest by defenders who wised up to his elusiveness, sliced wide from a good position on the right in the 34th minute. Girlie Torquay skipper Chris Hargreaves, all flowing locks and abundant energy, headed narrowly over from eight yards six minutes before the break following a Lee Mansell cross. The excuse-me-please squeeze past neighbouring kneecaps for half-time teas took us by way of the press benches. A glance at their notebooks indicated they'd found nothing to write about, either.   With my first goalless draw of the season looming larger than lighthouse Torquay keeper Scott Bevan  (basketball's loss was football's gain), the Gulls finally summoned sufficient urgency to open the scoring in the 68th minute. Tyrone Thompson, with a pass of a quality at variance with what went before and came after, delivered deliciously from the left using the outside of his right boot, and Roscoe DSane got the jump on his marker to sweep low past Michael Ingham from 10 yards. The exasperated old biddy in front of us had been pleading with City manager Colin Walker to bring on Craig Farrell, and she got her wish with 18 minutes left. His impact was immediate and a more purposeful York almost equalised in the 79th minute. Bevan used every inch of his elongated frame to tip over a Daniel McBreen header following a cross by lively substitute Simon Russell. But the Gulls' giraffe keeper could do nothing to prevent City's 85th-minute leveller. Slack marking in the penalty area allowed Mark Greaves to head a Ben Purkiss corner powerfully down into the net via a defender on the line. It was a soft goal. Former Minsterman Nicky Wroe, jeered on every occasion he touched the ball, volleyed tamely at Ingham with two minutes left, but the York keeper handed Torquay their winner in the first minute of added time. Unable to deal decisively with a wicked Thompson free-kick to the back post, he succeeded only in pawing it down, and substitute Mark Ellis rammed home gleefully the loose ball from an acute angle. An even softer goal.   There was a good-humoured fatalism among the York fans as they streamed out of the ground. They know a return to the Football League is unlikely this season. Perhaps City, now owned by the community in the wake of the infamous Douglas Craig episode, need the galvanising effect of a new stadium to get them upwardly mobile again. Ironically, the club were playing at an out-of-town site, at Fulfordgate, on the southern edge of the city, when they made the misguided decision to swap it for the vice-like confines of Bootham Crescent, then a cricket ground used by the Yorkshire county team. The cricketers moved to the other side of the adjacent York-Scarborough railway line, to a more spacious ground, now covered by a hospital. Walk a little further down the Bridge Lane alley and you come to Wigginton Road and the site, until 1989, of York RLFC's attractive tree-lined enclosure; now flats. The district's final sporting link will be severed when Bootham Crescent shuts its doors for the last time. It is not a ground to savour, but one can't help feeling inner city York is better than a soulless shed out by the ring road. Just ask the rugby league club. Life has never been the same for them since selling Wigginton Road and, tail between legs, traipsing off to windswept Huntington, three miles distant. Out of sight, out of mind. The Minstermen must choose wisely. They cannot afford a similar fate.

contributed on 17/11/08